Yup, I bet they are. Now let's battle!

Something I’ve always been surprised about is how Nintendo/Game Freaks have yet to capitalize on the TCG craze like they used to. Yes, the cards are very much still around, but while the physical cards were enjoyable, I found the most fun with the TCG for the Game Boy Color. It was so simple, essentially collecting a handful of the TCG cards at the time into one game cartridge and adding tons of AI opponents to play against. This was wonderful for me as a kid because I couldn’t really find people to play against in real life, so it was a brilliant solution.

But we’ve only had one TCG video game, and since then nothing. There’s got to be a market there, so why no new entry? At the very least, the Pokemon TCG is alive and well on the Internet, of all places, and registering is something I highly recommend doing as it’s free and opens up a nifty watered-down version of the Game Boy Color game, to a point. I’ll explain in a moment.

The first thing you’ll notice is how you can create your own avatar, which is par for the course when it comes to online games these days. Once you’re decked out, you can pop on over to some tutorials with a rather upbeat scholar of Pokemon cards and learn everything you’ll ever need to know to play the game. The dialogue and voice work here isn’t amazing, but it’s also not bad whatsoever. I kept reminding myself that this was a tutorial/game meant for the youngest of players, so with that in mind all I can say is the voice work is perfectly sharp and the tutorials aren’t overbearing to the point of frustration. A few refresher courses never hurt anyone.

For instance, quick refresher: That punk Sandshrew is about to be raqwked by my Bayleef.

It wasn’t until I dove into the single player aspect of the game that I started to see the cracks and the glimmers beneath the surface. The basic challenge pits you against 12 opponents in a leaderboard where defeating one will unlock the next. Once you take out all 12, you unlock a new leaderboard of 12, then another, and I’m not sure if there’s anything past that. Right from the get-go you have the option between three basic decks that you can switch between whenever you’d like. They are just basic Fire, Water, and Grass decks, but they’re not the worst. They’re also not the best.

What it took me a bit to understand (and unfortunately for how good the tutorials are at teaching you to play the game they’re terrible when it comes to explaining the interface) is that there are another half-dozen or so specialty decks you can unlock, but the way to unlock them is by buying the physical, real world decks and using a promo code found in the box to unlock them in the online game. So for me, that meant I’m using the loaner three decks.

For being simple single-energy decks, they’re not terrible, but the ability to customize your deck is entirely removed. You are at the whim of the computer presets that determine what our decks are comprised of, and only by beating the first 12 opponents with each deck can you unlock it to your collection of cards, which can be used in multiplayer.

Hooray for unlocks!

I’ll come back to multiplayer, but first I want to talk about that single player challenge some more. The AI never gave me any problems and usually functioned as competent opponents. The only glaring problem is that most, if not all games were little more than the luck of the draw. Every game seemed to play out by sheer chance as both my opponent and myself are optimizing hands perfectly, but who wins is decided entirely by luck. I’ve had games that last to a nail-biting finale, and a lot more that are over in three rounds or less.

This is more a complaint about the card game’s basic mechanics more than anything, but without the ability to customize my deck to best suit my needs, it really is all chance. If I draw three strong Pokemon, a couple energy cards, and a heavy evolution right away, while my opponent only has one active Pokemon, there’s a strong chance I’ll win pretty quick as long as he doesn’t draw another Pokemon to place on his bench. I don’t particularly feel like a brilliant tactician, but more like an opportunist taking advantage of a good hand. Were I to have the ability to form my own deck, victories would taste sweeter and defeats would sting more harshly. That is sadly not the case in the single player challenge.

Furthermore, the computer has decks that contain dual-types instead of my Podunk single-type decks, so it can put up a much bigger fight, usually only losing due to a bad draw on their part. They also seem to have some utter beasts ready to evolve right away, particularly the Fighting decks. Nothing’s more frustrating than a computer opponent that’s evolved a super powerful Pokemon in the first two moves, proceeding to then wreck your @$%& for the rest of the very short game.

I'm usually on the other end of an Arcanine reaming. Quite happy when I unlocked the card for my Basic Red deck instead of getting blasted in the second turn with BS.

However, these losses aren’t the end of the world, and after unlocking all three basic decks, your collection should have Fire, Water, Grass, and the standard Electric deck as well, allowing for a much deeper ability to customize. Plus, by unlocking those three basic decks, you’ve had a chance to see which Pokemon work best and which just aren’t worth the trouble. What you haven’t been able to do, though, is see which typing works best joined with one another. That will have to come during the multiplayer part it seems.

The greatest bit I’m upset about is the fact that Pokemon TCG Online isn’t on the 3DS at this moment. I would gladly pay upwards of $10 for this free online feature to migrate over to the 3DS as a download. It wouldn’t even need any major tweaks aside from some navigational overhauls (which the online version needs anyway). It’s apparent we’re not getting another dedicated TCG release on a system, but a boy can dream.

For what it is, the experience is enjoyable. Matches go extremely quick, even online, so it’s a fun game to just flip over to and play during a break session. And hey, for free, you can’t go wrong. I highly recommend it, despite the relatively broken game system. Now, go be the very best young Trainers you can be! May the luck of the draw be on your side!

You're darn right, Mick. Now go get a real job and stop challenging my superior luck abilities.

You ready for one more lap?

An important side note, I read a handful of reviews from other sites, specifically Destructoid, so when Jim Sterling gave his impressions of Mario Kart 7, effectively waggling a disapproving finger and deciding it was underwhelming, my first and only reaction was overreaction, claiming, “Well he just doesn’t like the series! There’s no way he’d give it a 5 out of 10 if he were being fair and actually knew what he was talking about! Hurdy gurdy bur!” This was all internal of course, but now I can say, very politely to Jim, “I disagree…to a point.”

Mario Kart 7 is a fine game. It’s a fine Mario Kart game. It’s a fantastic game for the 3DS and demonstrates its capabilities wonderfully. And it is indeed a franchise that’s showing its age in places, which I’ll get in to momentarily. But before I nit-pick and complain, I’d like to cover what the game did right.

Graphically, Mario Kart 7 again proves that the 3DS looks great and plays smoothly. Everything looks technically sound as you peel around corners and select through menus. The controls are tight and driving feels good. However, as a protip, make sure you’re aware that you can use both the L button and the X button for items. It took me a while to realize that X works just as good, so I’ve had quite a cramp in my hand from holding the system awkwardly.

I keep hearing over and over again that the real stars of the series are the tracks, and once more they don’t disappoint when it comes to new environments, for the most part. The coolest new addition is the use of sectional tracks rather than just circuits, meaning instead of just going around three times, you move through three checkpoints until you cross the finish line, allowing for a much greater sense of variety within the same race. I love that, but it sadly only happens three times. I would have gladly taken more.

This would work in real life...right? Please say yes!

Also new is the ability to hang glide at certain points, a welcome gameplay change that just feels right, plus a propeller that kicks in once you’re submerged that controls slightly differently than the other two kart forms. I found myself enjoying the underwater portions just as much as the rest, though they won’t be for everyone.

Finally, the new items are worthy of the game and mix things up appropriately. There is a fire flower powerup that allows you to hurl a bunch of fireballs at opponents, similar to Mario and Luigi’s signature weapons from Double Dash!!, as well as the tanooki tail, a powerup that takes some getting used to but that fits right in and works great in the harder races where everyone’s neck-and-neck.

But things aren’t all perfect. Despite the fluid controls, fun tracks, pretty graphics, and outstanding online modes (all there is to say about them is that they work just as well as the Mario Kart DS’s online modes worked), there’s a lot to be desired. Mario Kart 7 feels rather short, even though it’s the same length as the other Mario Kart games. It has eight cups with four tracks each, totaling 32 tracks, 17 characters, dozens of kart pieces to customize your play style, six battle maps, and four gameplay modes, but something still feels extremely lacking, and it may be because the title touts the fact that it’s the 7th game in the series.

See, when playing the new tracks, I thought, “These are great, but sadly there aren’t enough to really sink in.” While there are some standouts, such as the aforementioned sectional courses, we still waste time with the usual simple circuits early on or the uninteresting throwaway levels. But then you play the cups that revolve around tracks from past games and scratch your head, asking “Why this one?”

And why can't this tail make me fly?

I’m greedy, but I don’t think it’s unfair to want everything and more. I want a Mario Kart game with every previous track on it, every playable character, every item, every possible bit from the past. Why no more two-player kart action? Why no more bikes? Why only three new battle tracks and three fairly dull returns? Why not more, more, more?

But the biggest, most broken aspect of the games is the Blue Shell. I debated with myself on this one since it’s such a staple of the series, but now it’s just become a problem. Leading a race way out in front is not enjoyable because you become such a target for cheap shots from the computer. You’ll be absolutely killing in a race, zooming past the competition and just playing great, when all of a sudden you’ll hear the painful sound of the Blue Shell flying to get you and you’ll just get annoyed because there’s nothing you can do to avoid it short of stockpiling a Starman powerup, which you’ll never get if you’re in 1st place.

I get that the purpose of these super items is to allow other players a chance to catch up, or give you the ability to really stick it to the computer in the event that you’re losing, but the Blue Shell, the lightning, the Bullet Bill, all happen far too frequently to really feel like a hail Mary. Instead, they just come off as the computer punishing you for playing well. Nothing is worse than closing in on the home stretch, only to be blasted by a Blue Shell, then hit by lightning, then bumped off the track by other racers, and ending up going past the finish line in last place when you’ve been solid in 1st the entirety of the race. That’s broken and it should have been fixed by now, or at least given the option to turn it off.

That may be the heart of what I want here: I want a Super Smash Bros of Mario Kart. I want the ultimate compendium with races, battles, challenges, and full player control. I want options to nix certain items, or even build custom courses. When will we get that game? Perhaps not for a while, and that’s a shame.

At least there's more motion controls, which is what we were hoping for...

To cap this off, I’ll give you a rundown of the order I place the Mario Kart games. Way out in first is Mario Kart DS, followed closely by Double Dash!!, then Mario Kart 64, Mario Kart 7, Mario Kart Wii, Super Mario Kart, and finally Super Circuit. I suppose that means I’d place it right smack-dab in the middle of things then, huh? It’s not the best, it’s not the worst, it’s just there. Mario Kart 7 is a placeholder until something better comes along. Here’s hoping we won’t have to wait forever.

A brief history of punishment

Most arcade gamers usually cite the simplicity of classic games as one of the biggest reasons why they like them and remain popular. This is true but we all know that nostalgia outweighs any sort of logic when it comes to video games (or any toy, for that matter). Defender is one the most well-known arcade games right next to Galaga, Pac-Man and Donkey Kong. However, Defender is also one of the most difficult arcade games you’ll ever play and that is one reason why I never liked it.

Think you're a gamer? Defender will put you in your place.

Playing Defender is a lesson in brutality. It lacks big visuals (even for its time), it’s almost too fast, the controls are somewhat complex and the biggest turn off for me is its lack of obvious-ness (that’s a word now). When you start up Pac-Man or Galaga you know what to do right away. Even if you don’t know how (or aren’t trying) to get high scores, you can make your characters move on screen and be relatively successful. This isn’t what happens when you play Defender and it’s discouraging. Why punish yourself with Defender when Donkey Kong is already hard enough? Yet the release of a recent Xbox Indie title has taught me a lesson in not only the evolution of games but of gamers like myself.

Orbitron Revolution

Orbitron Revolution is one of the best-looking indie games you’ll see on the Xbox. Maybe I’m just a sucker for anything that reminds me of Wipeout, but from top to bottom this is a well-polished game and is worth your $3 for that alone, honestly. Add to that great sound and music plus three great challenge modes and you’ve got yourself a game that will please even the most timid arcade gamer.

Orbitron Revolution is as fun as it is beautiful.

Much like the aforementioned Defender, Orbitron charges you with destroying bad guys across a horizontal playing field and wraps around to be a giant donut…so it’s more or less an endless board that warps in enemies the longer your survive. You also get a duo of special weapons that deliver some extra punch, but only if you can collect the canisters left by the ships you destroy. You obviously get points for each kill but the faster you shoot them the higher your multiplier goes, so while you can just start shooting things one-by-one, if you’re trying to march your way up the leaderboard, that strategy probably won’t pan out. Of course, that depends on what game mode you’re playing.

In “Countdown” mode you’re racing against the clock, so all you want to do is destroy enemies as fast as possible, multipliers be damned. You get three minutes to fly around the space station and rack up points. In “Guardian” mode, your job is to rid the space station of drillers that are trying to destroy each of the four sectors (A, B, C and D). That sounds easy enough but there will be hundreds of baddies trying to stop you. You have unlimited lives in Guardian mode but once all four sectors are destroyed it’s game over. Last is the poorly named “Extra” mode where you’re given only one life to try and score as many points as possible. There aren’t any sectors to defend here, just lots and lots of aggressive enemies. This is the mode where you can work on your killing strategy and really get that multiplier up.

Orbitron is a really solid shooter that delivers what it promises. It has fast arcade action, great visuals, awesome sound and most importantly to me, it supports my joystick so I’m not left to play with the analog stick or awful D-pad. You’ll be hard pressed to find a better looking and better playing arcade shooter in the indie games lineup…so the $3 price tag is a no-brainer. This is one of the best arcade games I’ve played in a long time, and I’ll play just about any shooter that comes down the pike. But as I mentioned at the start, this game has made a greater impact on me, specifically in relation to Defender.

Re-discovering a classic

Orbitron isn’t a Defender clone or even a remake, it just borrowed some mechanics. If anything, Orbitron Revolution is a nod to Williams’ arcade classic, and a good one at that. But while playing Orbitron I started to think about Defender and why I can love Orbitron so much but hate Defender when they are very similar in design and spirit. So to be fair, I went back and played Defender again while trying to keep my past judgement at bay.

To my surprise, Defender made sense now. I understood what I was supposed to do, the mechanics clicked…in other words, I finally “got it”. Defender is still insanely difficult, much harder than Orbitron, but I ended up enjoying Defender more than I expected and it is quickly rising up in my list of favorite arcade games, albeit slowly. I’m not sure that Orbitron suddenly made me like Defender but I think that since Orbitron doesn’t have quite the barrier of entry Defender does, I was able to get my head around the play mechanics and challenge of that type of shooter. Orbitron helped me re-discover Defender…like the times when you find out a song is a cover and then you discover and fall in love with the original artist. It took something new to appreciate something old, and I can now see why Defender is such a revered game.

Digging a little deeper

However, I can’t also help but think about my own gaming evolution in relation to Defender and even Orbitron. It had been years since I played Defender because when I first played, it was so damn hard that I gave up too soon. It was too brutal, but Defender‘s minimal presentation didn’t help things either. There’s not a lot of information on-screen to help you decide what to do or how to go about doing it. Every character is pretty small and the controls are a bit awkward. Mash all those things together and you have a game that will only appeal to players that enjoy punishment…and that’s why I’m hooked now, many years later. I like punishment. I want punishment. I’ve played enough games by now, particularly arcade shooters, that I’m finally ready for Defender. I’m ready to be punished.

This all probably sounds silly considering Defender is more than 30 years old, but I’m not ashamed, and I have Orbitron Revolution to thank for all of it. Without that gem of a game I wouldn’t have revisited Defender, so in some ways I got two games for the price of one. But do yourself a favor and do not play Defender and Orbitron back-to-back. Rightfully so, they are two different games with different challenges and different goals, and jumping between the two in one session just makes things more difficult than they already are. Buy Orbitron Revolution because it’s a great game created by some hard-working folks, and we should all want to see more from the studio, Firebase Industries. Go back and play Defender because you’ve gotten complacent with your current stable of games and want to be reminded why you started playing video games in the first place.

Orbitron Revolution is available through the Xbox Game Marketplace and is only $3 (240MSP).

Well, unless you’re Ron that is.

By now, if you’ve played one LEGO game in the past, odds are you know how these play out: you take a series of popular movies and reenact them as if all their characters, plots, and set pieces were to be performed in the light, whimsical, rigid and plastic (in a literal sense) world that is LEGO. Gameplay itself hasn’t budged an inch either: You alternate playing as a multitude of LEGOised characters from said movies (in this case, Harry, Ron, Hermione, and just about any minor character you can think of), progressing through LEGOised set pieces from said movies (Hogwarts, Diagon Ally, the Ministry of Magic, etc.) by form of platforming, solving puzzles, fighting off enemies from said movies (Dementors, Death Eaters, etc), all the while involving the need of teamwork by implementing each of the characters’ individual abilities and items from their skill set which, more or less, is based on their unique attributes from said movies (Harry’s Invisibility Cloak, Ron’s Weasly gadgets from his brother’s joke shop, Hermione’s pet Crookshanks,what have you).

And yet, as formulaic as these games have gotten, with LEGO Harry Potter it still manages to feel unique and entertaining. In my own opinion, both LEGO Harry Potter games (Years 1-4, and Years 5-7) are probably the best LEGO games. My reasoning behind this is that the source material translates a lot better to this style of play than the other franchises Travelers Tales has attempted to tackle. Case in Point, magic spells and wizarding artifacts from Harry Potter are a lot more fun to play with LEGO style than guns, whips, swords, and blacksmithing from Indiana Jones or Pirates of the Caribbean.

And while all their games have done a great job visually by adapting each of the movies’ set pieces quite faithfully, the level design this time around felt especially well done. Particularly any scene that took place in the Room of Requirements really caught my fancy. That place truly felt like a giant over-cluttered junk-filled hole-in-the-wall.

All joking aside, sometimes the funnest route to completing these games really is to just run around and zap everything zappable and collect all the LEGO bits (Studs) you can. I still don’t really know why, but grabbing a Blue Stud is still one of the most satisfying sounds to hear in every game. Only after everything that is expendable has been expended do you turn on your brain to solve a puzzle or two, which can mean an assortment of things: collect a key, mix a potion, recruiting other characters to assist you with their own unique attributes, things like that. Many of these quote/unquote “puzzle sections” are pretty self explanatory, especially if you’ve already played through Years 1-4 (A game that actually did have one or more places that pretty much stumped my friends and I). I will forgive it though, because it’s trying to make puzzle sequences accessible for kids. I’m 23, and kids half my age should have very little problem progressing through this game. Even kids a third of my age who have their wits about them should be able to learn something.

But at the end of the day, the question of whether or not this game is too easy for older audiences or too hard for younger audience really turns out to be irrelevant, as the biggest selling point in these games is not so much the game play, but the laugh-out-loud cut scenes that humorously pantomime through scenes adapted straight from the films. While the story occasionally takes a few liberties for the sake of level construction, and there is definitely a bigger emphasis on the movies rather than the books (much to the dismay of all you whiny purists out there who won’t stop having a hissy fit that The Burrow never got burned down in The Half Blood Prince), it’s best to think of it as a high-end parody, because that’s what it is. A very well written and masterfully animated parody.

That’s not to say this game is not without its faults. Unfortunately, HP Yrs.5-7 carries on a few of the same technical faults as its predecessors. These LEGO games have a tendency to be occasionally glitchy. When my friends and I were playing, there was one instance when an NPC background character would wander around, then stop directly in front the doorway to the outside, preventing us from exiting to the next portion of the stage. We had to exit through another doorway in the room, then backtrack to see if he went away. In another instance, we had the game freeze up on us during a load screen. Sure, we turned it off and rebooted the game back up just fine, but it’s still tedious.

Those were just two that I experienced first hand. Now these aren’t necessarily glitches, but they are worth mentioning. Your Leviosa spell, which is pretty much your bread and butter when it comes to putting LEGO contraptions together, activating inanimate objects, and throwing blunt force attacks at enemies, has an auto-lock-on feature that in theory should work very easily, but when there is too much stuff on the screen, there is a tendency to not activate the proper target if your avatar is not looking and standing in a very specific direction. Another thing is that many of the other standard spells that all playable characters will have, (Reducto, Lumos, Patronus, Diffendo) all do pretty much the exact same thing (fire a different colored magic beam attack) unless they hit a very specific target that triggers their unique property. The only spell that looks somewhat different is the Aquamente spell, and it’s the one that seems to be the most imprecise when it comes to aiming.

Once all these different colored spells are learned, they are used in a new dueling mechanic. Wizards face off one-on-one and you must attack your opponent with the corresponding colored spell in order to counter them with a quick time event. It’s very simplistic, yet quite intuitive, and does challenge how quick you are to rotate though all your wheel of spells.

To wrap this up, I was surprisingly pleased with how much I enjoyed this game. The prequel, Yrs.1-4, was inherently about the lighter and fun portion of the Potter storyline, so of course it was perfectly fitting for the LEGO universe. Yrs. 5-7 on the other hand is much darker, with far more mature undertones, so I thought it would be a lot more difficult to translate. Turns out, there was nothing to worry about. Travelers Tales found what was fun in these films and road with them regardless of the tone, and the disjuncture of the LEGO backdrop with the dark story almost made it more hilarious.

Seeing as there is not much competition out there, I feel safe staying that LEGO Harry Potter Years 5-7 is possibly the best Harry Potter video game available for the current generation of consoles. It pokes fun at the movies and a bit of the books while also capturing the heart and spirit that made you fall in love with the series in the first place. All of John Williams’ outstanding music scores are present and accounted for. The 2-player Co-op in this game is also done brilliantly. If you are looking to get a game for the Potter fanatic in your life this Christmas, you can’t do much better than this.

Well done, TT Games. Now go make LEGO Spider-Man. {Pranger’s Note: Or LEGO Dragon Ball Z!]

Bright? Colorful? Mario? Sold!

Mario, while quite the versatile mascot, has always been best when platforming. Personally I’ve rather enjoyed his 3D games better as it takes longer to complete each, plus when you’re really moving, man does it feel good. Super Mario 3D Land takes cues from everywhere with a play style similar to Super Mario 64, an art style similar to Super Mario Galaxy or New Super Mario Bros, the return of the Tanooki Suit and Boom-Boom from Super Mario Bros 3, and the combined efforts of all previous Mario games to squeeze something in for good measure. In the simplest terms, this is the sum of all Mario games as viewed on a handheld device.

Thankfully, for a handheld everything is pretty smooth. My biggest complaint with a lot of Mario’s handheld adventures has been the size of the screen as it can restrict just how much of the area I can see while platforming. Super Mario Land made Mario smaller so that more level could appear on the screen whereas Super Mario Land 2 made Mario bigger and slower with less level on the screen at one time. Super Mario 3D Land has a good balance as I never felt Mario was too big or too small for the purposes of the game, plus everything just looked so nice that I didn’t have time to worry.

Oh that looks nice. The levels may not be huge, but they're certainly fun.

It’s amazing that this wasn’t a launch title, or rather it’s a shame it wasn’t as it would have moved quite a few more 3DS systems due to the graphics and the 3D effect alone. Finally, there is a 3DS game that must must MUST be played with the 3D slider on in order to fully enjoy the experience. For some reason you even have the option of making the game’s 3D even better, which is essentially just a button you leave turned on at all times. The use of 3D is great and makes every level pop out in such a way that you stop outwardly noticing by the end of the first level, though you never forget it’s there. That’s hard to do but that’s the true goal of 3D.

Everything comes down to the controls. Does Mario control well? This is where I’m starting to see some faults. I got used to Mario, but he’s starting to become a bit slower in his old age, at least a little bit. You have the standard 3D Mario platformer moves such as the long jump and the backflip, but you won’t need to make much use of either. Part of this is because Mario cannot grip edges, something that will take quite a bit of getting used to and result in more deaths than you’d prefer.

The real star here is the Tanooki Suit. It doesn’t play quite like it did in Super Mario Bros 3, but it’s still just as awesome. You can control your decent in the air, making it easier to time jumps and make precise leaps, specifically the final flagpole jump at the end of every stage (and it’s important to hit the top in every stage as the game keeps track that you’ve done so in every level). The Boomerang Flower is a welcome addition as it grants Mario the ability to retrieve coins and items from a distance, and the Fire Flower is a classic standby, but the Tanooki Suit will take preference over all others, which makes sense as the entire loose plot of the game revolves around Bowser stealing all the leaves off the Tanooki Suit Tree, or something like that, resulting in enemies having Tanooki tails. It’s remarkably charming to see Bullet Bills with tails or even Bowser himself sporting the ringed addition to his backside.

Now if we could just get Mario's cape back, everything would be gravy.

As far as difficulty goes, I can’t really say. I’m good at Mario games, there’s no getting around that, so when I tell you my progress you have to assume that’s from someone who knows what they’re doing. After two days playing at a relaxed pace, I had beaten the entire main game (Worlds 1-8), including obtaining all possible Star Coins (three per level) and hit the top of the flagpole in every stage. By the time I had beaten Bowser I had accrued over 200 lives.

Thing is, lives are dished out like candy, so you can easily die three times in a level but finish with a total of ten for the stage. I’m very thankful that lives do not top out at 99, instead continuing into the hundreds. Oddly, this does in fact make me care more about then since I want to have as many as possible, if only for bragging rights. There will be some later stages where beginner players will desperately need some extra lives, and the game offers a fairly generous help system of giving a random power-up after two deaths, a Super Tanooki Suit (Tanooki Suit plus Starman) after five deaths, and a P-Wing that instantly beats a level after ten deaths. I was never given the Super Tanooki Suit, but many players no doubt will want to make use of these simply implemented aides.

Thankfully, there isn't really anything big and scary enough to make you freak out, but this is afterall a Mario game.

One thing I will say about the game is that I’m extremely pleased with the finale against Bowser this time around. The last three 3D Mario games haven’t really captured the feel of a full-on fight with the Koopa King, so when I found myself with sweaty palms and a panicked stare attempting not to die at the last second, I was very pleased.

Also, the game may feel short at first, but upon completing the first eight worlds, eight new worlds appear as variations of the first eight. These Special Worlds as they’re called take elements from each level and tweak them a bit to increase the difficulty, and while I’ve still yet to find any unbearably difficult by the second Special World, I will certainly say that they’re harder, so I’m enjoying myself. Plus, Luigi gets unlocked and plays like he has in the Super Mario Galaxy games, so who can be unhappy about that?

Naturally, you'll get your retro throwbacks sprinkled in, so no complaining there.

And that’s really what you can take away from all this. I really am enjoying myself, despite some frustrating deaths at the hands of Mario’s slow momentum or the weird tricks the 3D can play on you. You just can’t get that mad at deaths when you have 200 lives I suppose. I fully recommend Super Mario 3D Land to anyone with a 3DS, and especially to anyone considering purchasing a 3DS any time soon. This is the software you were waiting for, so it’s time to finally adopt.

Hot dogs and pickles and eggs, oh my

I know I’ve quickly become the resident “old coot” that doesn’t think anything new is better than the old originals, but in my defense, that’s usually the case. Everyone and their brother tries to reinvent or re-introduce old arcade franchises, and that rarely turns out good. Some games, like Pac-Man CE, end up being new classics and worthy heirs to the throne, but most games just need to stay in their original form, and BurgerTime is one of them.

The original BurgerTime easily makes it onto my Top 5 list of favorite arcade games. I admit that I was introduced to BurgerTime on the NES, but I went back from there to discover the arcade version and never looked back. BurgerTime took the the methodical game play of Pac-Man and applied it to the wonderful world of fast food. You play the part of Peter Pepper and your job is to make hamburgers, but in your way stands the meanest hot dogs, eggs and pickles you’ve ever met.

Even though BurgerTime has the looks of a platformer, I have trouble calling it that because there’s no jumping. The only thing you have to stave off the evil condiments of doom is your speed, your wits and a few shots of pepper, which will stun your enemies where they stand. To score points you need to run over the parts of your sandwich, at which point they will fall to the bottom of the board. If you manage to crush the bad guys you’ll get extra points, and if you can manage to give Mr. Hot Dog a ride on your falling tomato, you’ll get even more points. It takes patience and flick-of-the-wrist moves to run up your score, but that’s okay because you’re in no hurry…there’s no timer to worry about.

There’s plenty of challenge in the original BurgerTime that rivals any classic arcade game and it will test any gamer’s mettle. Unfortunately, the latest version of BurgerTime, released last week on XBLA and PSN, won’t test your mettle or even rock like heavy metal. BurgerTime World Tour exhibits just about everything that makes a less-than-mediocre game while simultaneously making loyal arcade fans weep.

Not the BurgerTime you remember…or want

BurgerTime World Tour takes the same premise as the original, man versus food, but in efforts to update the game, the developers manage to deliver little more than a crappy avatar platformer…and this time it really is a platformer. For some reason they decided that allowing your character to jump was a good idea. Now let me ask you this: Do you think Pac-Man would be just as a fun if you could jump over the ghosts? Of course not, that’s half the challenge and fun! Now in BurgerTime World Tour you don’t even have to worry about running around avoiding the evil eggs, you can just jump over them.

As if that wasn’t enough to ruin a good game, you’ll be facing a new enemy in this version of BurgerTime – the clock. Every level has a target time to beat, and just like that you’re in a race against the clock rather than worrying about how to lead and thwart your enemies in order to exploit them for the most points possible. One of the great things about the original BurgerTime was your ability to set the pace. You could spend 15 minutes on the first board if you needed…it was all about the points. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good timed mode game…they’re the best, if you ask me. But that just doesn’t work in a game that asks you to lead unpredictable AI to specific spots on the board. So am I trying to finish the level as fast as I can, or am I supposed to take my time and try to rank up the points?

Another aspect of BurgerTime World Tour that doesn’t help things are the updated graphics. As one would expect, they 3D-ized the game, which might have been a welcomed change if said visuals didn’t make playing the game even more uncertain and frustrating. One of the skills you learn in the original BurgerTime is leading a bad guy onto one of the ingredient platforms (like lettuce) and then making it fall, earning you big points. It’s tricky and requires near pixel-perfect timing and precision. This isn’t too bad when you’re looking at a 2D board but when you have (poorly rendered) 3D shapes and characters running around, it complicates your timing and is thus quite irritating. But if you’ve ever wanted to see yourself chase done a hot dog in a cowboy hat, you’re in luck because BurgerTime World Tour lets you play as your avatar character. Oh joy.

Quit ruining good games!

There’s one thing that could have saved BurgerTime World Tour and that would have been the original BurgerTime. I don’t know why they didn’t bundle in the original game as an unlock achievement because that would have (almost) made the game worth the $10 price tag. But as it stands, BurgerTime World Tour comes off as a half-assed re-imagining of an arcade classic. It reeks of one of those cheap avatar games you find in the indie section that does little more than con you out of your dollar.

More often than not, a light touch is all that is needed to update and reintroduce a classic game to a new generation of gamers. If I was asked to remake BurgerTime, I might have added some more levels and updated the 2D graphics a bit, but the core game would have remained unchanged. It worked for Pac-Man CE, there’s no reason it wouldn’t have worked for BurgerTime. ‘Tis a shame.

I must disclaim that I did not play the multiplayer modes of BurgerTime World Tour and thus this review only covers the single-player mode.

All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night, in the dusty recesses of their mind, wake in the day to find that it was vanity.

But the dreamers of the day, are dangerous men, for they may act out their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.

This. I did.

T.E. Lawrence (1888-1935)

Two years ago, Naughtydog’s Uncharted 2 Among Thieves set a new golden standard for the Triple A Market, wowing critics and fans alike with its griping story, enthralling characters, phenomenal writing, and the absolute best production values in the business. It would go on to win a total of 32 Game of the Year Awards. As a super fan of Naughtydog since the hay days of the PS1, I cannot tell you how enthused I was that the company had received the recognition and praise it worked 14 years and 10 games to achieve. So of course, once the festivities of the 2009 award ceremonies died down, Naughtydog realized they had their work seriously cut out for them. So off they went to do everything in their power to make their third installment, Uncharted 3 Drake’s Deception, live up to every last bit of hype they received.

Drake’s Deception begins with Nathan Drake exploring the mysteries behind his latent ancestor, Sir Francis Drake, and his questionably long six month expedition across the East Indies. As the title suggests, Sir Francis deceived history in an attempt to hide his true findings in those six months: a voyage that would ultimately lead to a “Land of immeasurable wealth, destroyed by God for its arrogance.” Not one to let grass grow under his feet, our hero Nate sets out on a voyage to discover clues to this land, the Atlantis of the Sands, located somewhere in the heart of the Rub’ al Khali desert. Aided by his trusted mentor and father figure Victor Sullivan (Sully), Drake follows clues that take him from the back alleys of London, to the ruins of France and Serbia, and even the city of Yehmen, all the while competing against Katherine Marlowe, leader of a highly secret society that’s been hell-bent on discovering the secrets of Ubar for decades and exploiting it for their own pursuit of power and influence.

Before I go any further, I would like to say how much I wish I could sit here and simply review the game by it’s own merits: a masterfully crafted action adventure romp that blends gunplay, melee combat, puzzles, and platforming like a charm, all the while having a complex story with fun characters to go with it. I understand that some fans have been frustrated how so many reviews insist on comparing it to Uncharted 2, and how unfair that may seem. I get that, but at the same time, that’s just the standard this series has set for itself. Asking us not to compare this to Uncharted 2 would be like asking movie critics not to compare Chris Nolan’s 3rd up-coming Batman movie to The Dark Knight. Ain’t gonna happen.

What this means is that at least 90% of Uncharted 3’s biggest highlights are things that I already knew the game would have a year before I bought it midnight of its opening day. Voice Acting and Mo-cap work: No competition. Story: Epic in scale. Writing: Laugh out loud funny. Set pieces: Huge. Graphics: Honest to god, the best looking game I have ever seen, with cut scenes and gameplay flowing seamlessly with no load times in between.

I’d be lying if I said that Uncharted 3 didn’t add anything new from its previous installments. In fact, the very first chapter of the game is a bar room brawl, and it is specifically crafted to introduce the game’s revamped melee system, which has evolved in ways to make each encounter a surprise by having Drake interact with his surroundings mid fight and use any object he can find at his disposal. Another small but welcomed technique to weapon combat is the ability to intercept grenades thrown at you and rebound them before they explode.

For roughly the first third of the game, there is a much more significant emphasis on puzzles, which were actually very minimal and solved simply by looking in your journal in Uncharted 2. This time, they are a tad more clever than that, and while your journal will give you hints, they won’t just hand you the answer.

Character wise, while there are a few new faces, both good and bad, this is definitely a journey for our long-time heroes. Drake and Sully’s coveted bromance takes center stage with Elena filling in a very solid B-Plot. These three take up the bulk of the emotional depth in this game. Chloe, who was really big in Uncharted 2, shows up for a bit of fan service, but besides showing off that she no longer has that awkward green gleam in her eyes, she is more or less there to be the linchpin that connects Drake and co. to the late yet much appreciated addition to the cast, her [new] boyfriend, Charlie Cutter.

The one thing about this series that I’m no longer able to overlook is how often I repeatedly run into the same ten enemy models. Course, this isn’t different from any other game out there (hell, there is probably more enemy models in this game than half a dozen other shooters out there), but because of the amount of detail and life Uncharted breaths into their main and supporting cast, it makes the clone army I’m fighting look all the more uncanny. One case in particular involves this massive brute guy that I engage in Hand-to-Hand like five times within the course of the game. And it’s literally the same model every time, (with the exception of once when he’s wearing a turban). I suspended my disbelief by convincing myself that he was the exact same guy every time, and he just keeps coming back for rematches. I named him Tiny.

Little things like that, or the very few gaming glitches like when I roll with the circle button when I want to take cover, are pretty petty in the long run, are not really the problem here. What’s really wrong is that the heart that propels this game beyond greatness -as much as it pains me to use this cliché- is two years in the past. There are some truly epic action set pieces in this game: an escape from a burning building, jumping a plane, blowing up said plane, and a horseback ride chase after a convoy. While I’m not trying to say they are carbon copies of what happened in Among Thieves, they still feel like spiritual throwbacks to many of the things we did back then. Ironically enough, the one sequence of Drake’s Deception that actually does feel completely unique to anything we did before –that being the whole shipyard/battle on the waning cruse ship/escape the sinking ship quickly filling with water sequence- is the one part of the game that feels the most detached from the rest of the plot, meaning that this whole sequence could have been easily cut from the campaign, and we the players would have been none the wiser.

And therein leads me to the plot. Drake’s Deception begins with a lot of promise, setting itself up to be the biggest most highest stake plot of the series. Drakes ring is the key that leads to the city of Ubar. We see how Nate out-stole the ring against Marlowe’s society as a child, and in the process left both himself and her in a stalemate that has lasted twenty years. We also get to see how Sully jumped Marlowe’s ship in order to stick his neck out for a young Nathan, betting all his cards on this raw talented kid who would grow up to be not only his greatest disciple, but his best friend. Not only that, there is a darker sense of omission in this adventure. All the clues lead to the conclusion that Sir Francis did not want this secret of this city to be let out, and how there is probably a very good reason why he lied about what he saw. Elena tries so hard to point this out to Nate, yet his own need for the truth and lust for adventure won’t allow him to let go. To top it all off, we get to see Nate in his most vulnerable state ever, as his adversaries this time bring up the one thing that can really strike fear into Drake’s heart.

These are all epic, out there, big idea stuff, and they are exactly what we wanted to see in a third [possibly final] installment to Uncharted (PSVita spinoff not whistanding).

If only they were handled properly.

To begin, the villains, while being inherently and conceptually more interesting than the foes of the past two games, get very little time to fully develop and express themselves. The secret society Kate is a part of turns out to be centuries old, dating all the way back to the Elizabethan era. It all began as a covert group of spies working under the Queen, and of which one of their highest ranking officers was in fact sir-named “Marlow.” So there could be a really neat parallel between both Nate and Kate following the shadows of their supposed ancestors, the problem is that all that stuff I just mentioned never actually plays out in the game. I had to look it up.

Second is Kate’s lieutenant Talbot. From the get go, he is set up to be this badass that can be more than a match for Drake. He’s strong, resourceful, he’s quick and clever, and does a damn good job at one-upping our protagonist at every corner. Yet I can’t tell you for the life of me what his motive is in all this. For perspective, let’s compare him to the side villains of the last two games. Navarro from Drake’s Fortune started off seeming like any other hired gun, yet all along was a very crafty guy bidding his time. He waited for the absolute perfect opportune moment to betray Roman, pop a cap in his head, and make off with El Dorado all to himself.

“I am the only person on this Island who knows what the hell he is doing.”

Flynn from Among Thieves, however, was a complete moron only in it for the perks, and found himself stuck working under Lezarevic out of fear rather than any loyalty.

“Beats working against him, love.”

Then you have Talbot, who is not only very crafty and intelligent, but is still deathly loyal to Marlow, and we never find out why. Time and time again he shows that he would be perfectly capable of finding the city of Ubar all on his own. Where does Talbot’s loyalty to Kate come from? Is there a deeper connection between the two? Does he just have a strong sense of honor? I want to know these things. Also, what’s up with that special toxin of his that allows him to drug people and manipulate them? Where the hell did he get that kind of weapon, and why is it so similar to another toxin that’s found in Ubar?

Big Spoilers from this point onward. To avoid them, skip ahead to the next highlighted area…

The final two chapters of the game, when Nate and Sully finally reach Ubar/Iram of the Pillars/Atlantis of the Sands/Land that has WAY TOO MANY NAMES, that part in particular feels especially rushed. Unlike the Shambala section at the end of Among Thieves, I didn’t really feel like I got the chance to explore this land to its potential. Throughout the game, we get hints that Drake’s one big fear is this foreboding sense of isolation that plagued him as a child before he met Sully. Hypocritically, he abandons his attachment to Elena because his obsession with Francis Drake and this ring comes from his need for a sense of belonging and purpose in the world, when in reality, he may not really be his ancestor at all (yet another interpretation of where the Deception in the title comes from).

All these things are brought up toward the final moments of Drake’s Deception. There is a point when we are lead to believe that Sully is killed by Talbot and Drake’s fear of isolation is realized. The following gameplay really hits that aforementioned fear home and there is a real sense of anguish and distress… but then it disappointingly fizzles out after only 10-20 minutes as Sully abruptly shows back up in the picture and we find out that it was a fear inducing toxin in the spring water that caused Drake to temporarily hallucinate. Why didn’t they keep going with that? Those fire demons that Drake saw in that state were freaking awesome, and I thought a fire demon version of Talbot would show up and we’d have this big epic boss fight. Why did they have to end that development so abruptly? There eventually is a real final confrontation with Talbot, and while it is indeed visually satisfying, it just doesn’t live up to anywhere my imagination was taking me fifteen minutes prior.

To the game’s credit, I did appreciate the one element in the end where Drake does finally overcome this incessant need to follow in his supposed ancestor’s footsteps and is able to let the ring go, and how he finally realizes what a strong companionship he has in Elena.

End of Spoilers.

If this is starting to sound like a “Bad Games That Should Have Been Great” kind of review, please keep note that wasn’t my intention, and it most certainly isn’t the case. It’s more like a “Great Game That Should Have Been Legendary,” kind of deal. Naughtydog overshot themselves almost too far this time. One very reasonable solution is that the game should have been given a longer development cycle (it certainly deserved it.) Not only would it have allowed Naughtydog to take their time and really nail the strongest aspects of this game, it would have given us the fans more time to let go of our predisposed feelings for Uncharted 2, which was still way too fresh in our minds. If given another year, we’d be less anticipating something that would be the successor of Uncharted 2, and simply be more excited to see another Uncharted game entirely. I’m not quite sure if whether it was Sony pushing to get the game out in just under two years, or Naughtydog simply being way too ambitious for their own good, either way, the early release may not have been the best decision.

In retrospective, this is not much different from the results of the Naughtydog’s two previous trilogies. (Crash Bandicoot on the PS1 and Jak on the PS2.) In all three series, the first installment establishes a world and shows what the technology of the console is capable of. The second installment takes that world and the tech that surrounds it to its utmost potential and reinvigorates the entire genre of that generation. And the third installment is a technological marvel that adds maybe a few cool things to the already successful formula, but lacks a bit in the overall awe factor that preceded it.

So, to bring this review back to the metaphor I established at the beginning, no, Naughtydog did not manage to cross the desert that was this game’s hype. If given more time to prepare, they may have had a chance. As it was, they jumped in far too anxiously and got way more sand than they bargained for. But you know what? They still got pretty damn far, even if they didn’t make it all the way. And the best part is they managed to survive this ordeal, and live to make another game. Like Jak 4. Please please please make Jak 4.

Also, if anyone tells you Uncharted 3 Drake’s Deception is a rip-off of Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade, tell them to shut up. Just because both stories have flashbacks to the hero’s childhood in his midteens, and there’s a fight on a rocking boat with crazy huge tides, and they find a clue inside a crusader’s coffin, and they escape a burning building, and they get tied up, and there’s a foreign friend that gives them horses so they can chase after a convoy to rescue a certain character who then goes on to die anyway but not really and then they all run for their lives out of a collapsing temple as the foreign friend shows up with the horses that they ride off on during the end of the adventure DOES NOT MAKE THEM EXACTLY THE SAME. Does The Last Crusade have online co-op where you and your friends fight off clowns? I think not.

[Sigh.] That was fun. But seriously, play this game.

The story goes that the city of New Marais celebrates Pyre Night every year come Halloween. And of course with city wide carousing comes unsavory prowlers in the night. Our hero Cole goes to investigate some disappearances underneath the Church, but is soon captured himself and brought forth to the corpse of… wait for it… Bloody Mary. Yeah that’s right, she actually exists in this universe. Turns out, Mary needed to inject the blood of a very powerful Conduit (term in the game for people with the gene to develop super powers) in order to restore her body to it’s youthful form. She sucks Cole, restoring her body, and turning him into a Vampire, who now has only one night of free will to kill Mary before the sun rises and his mind is completely subdued under her influence, becoming just another one of her minions.

It is a bit unclear when this is suppose to take place during in the canon of the series, but what’s interesting about it is that the whole story is narrated by Cole’s buddy Zeke, who is in real time telling the story to some chick in a bar, trying to prove to her that he’s a friend of the “Electric Man.” I find it hilarious, because the whole time, we don’t really know how credible the story really is, or if Zeke really does all the awesome stuff he says he does in this story. In essence, the continuity in the story really doesn’t matter. Just sit back and enjoy the game.

The gameplay is a lot of the same. Cole gets all his usual lightning powers and rather quickly. But there are a few additional vampire techniques, including a vampire sense, which allows you to scope out other vampires in disguise among civilians, and stake them unawares. Probably the biggest selling point is the Vampire flight technique. Yeah, Cole can totally turn his body into a swarm of bats and fly at light speed above the city. It makes the already quick method of moving across the city through wire sliding feel sluggish by comparison. If in Infamous 2, you ever felt jealous of Kuo and Nix’s abilities to zip across the city with ease, now you can experience it yourself. Of course, this new technique requires blood to fuel instead of electricity, so you may have to occasionally feed on local Pyre Night celebrators.

One of the main complaints that many people had with Infamous 2 was that Cole was too super powered and that all the enemies became too easy to take down. Well, in answer to that, I can say that Mary’s minions in Festival of Blood, the vampires and especially these bat creatures, were some of the most formidable enemies I’ve fought in the series thus far. They move really quickly, their weapons have a lot of range, and because each of them has that same zippy flying technique that you do, they were really difficult to run or hide from when things get rough.

Truth be told, the game doesn’t last that long at all. You could probably finish all the story missions in 2-3 hours tops. Given time exploring the city with your new powers, searching for collectables, and the few side missions, the game may last 4-5 hours. In addition, for those who are into the user-made-content, Festival of Blood adds some new tools and mission types to work with. It is also nice to know that you do not have to own or have played any of the previous InFamous games in order to purchase this, so if you haven’t played the series yet, this may be a quick, easy, and above all cheap way to have a taste of what it’s like.

InFamous Festival of Blood is available for $10 on the Play Station Network. Happy Pyre Night everybody, and take care not to go creeping about any haunted churches this evening!

For reference, Batman is my excitement level, and the face being kicked is any face within flying kick radius.

I reviewed Arkham Asylum way back when it came out and loved everything about it, utterly devouring the game to the point that there isn’t a single thing left for me to do. However, I didn’t purchase the game. Rather, all of that love was feasible within a two-week period borrowing from my friend Other Chris. A whole new precedence has been set with Arkham City, causing a lot of firsts for me.

In the entire time I’ve owned an Xbox 360, I’ve never once purchased a game Day One. For that matter, I haven’t purchased an Xbox 360 game for full price and certainly haven’t pre-ordered any with the intent of snagging some pre-order bonuses. Arkham City made one heck of an exception as I not only pre-ordered the title (from Best Buy so that I could unlock Robin in the Challenge Maps), I went ahead and picked up my copy at a midnight release. For the past week I’ve been staying up at least two hours past when I should be asleep, all because I can’t get enough of it.

The plot is rather intriguing. Last time we saw Batman, he was on the receiving end of one of the Joker’s biggest schemes, resulting in an asylum-wide breakout that caused some pretty great twists. This time, Batman is thrown into another prison, the massive Arkham City, for reasons that aren’t entirely clear when you first start out. However, the most Batman-lore we really had the chance to experience from the previous game was through the Joker and Harley Quinn, Bane, Killer Croc, and The Scarecrow. The Riddler was there, somewhat, but other than that the most we got were little hints at the rest of the world.

For reference, Batman represents Batman here, and Catwoman represents my desire to let Batman have his way with me.

Things are vastly different this time as Catwoman appears right away, along with Two-Face. The Big Bad orchestrating the overarching plot is Hugo Strange, a rather fascinating choice since I know nothing about the character despite reading my fair share of Batman. The Joker and Harley return, but the revolving door of standout characters is just wonderful. Mr. Freeze, The Penguin, heck, even Calendar Man, all show up and blow me away with their voice acting and character depth.

Before going all crazy for the combat (which I’m about to gush over to the point of having a Batgasm), I need to stop and address the quality of voice acting. Kevin Conroy reprises his role as The Caped Crusader, reminding me why he’s my favorite Batman in any form. Grey DeLisle’s Catwoman has been one of the best parts of the game for me, as is Danny Jacobs’ chilling performance as Zsasz and Wally Wingert’s ever-present Riddler, but we all know the star of the show is Mark Hamill in his (supposedly) very last performance as The Joker. Half the time The Joker isn’t even interacting with Batman directly- you’ll just get voicemails from him as he talks about how Batman never picks up when he calls- but it’s so good that you may begin to fear that some other part of the game has to be lacking with voice acting that’s so Top Shelf.

For reference, The Joker here represents my crazy uncle and, um, I forget, but Mark Hamill wins Joker.

Thankfully, there isn’t a single area that’s feeling under appreciated. Rocksteady claims that the open area of Arkham City is 5 times larger than Arkham Asylum, and after Batmaning around for a while I can just about confirm this. It isn’t the largest overworld ever, but you’ll never feel claustrophobic and there are so many things to do in the space that you won’t have time to look around. Most of the time you’ll intend to quickly head from one side of the map to the other, only to get sidetracked a half-dozen times by Riddler Trophies, side missions, and the unquenchable urge to dive down in the middle of a crowd of thug and start brawling.

Batman returns with all his signature moves from Arkham Asylum’s combat system, probably my single favorite combat engine ever. When a fight starts, Batman transitions into freeflow combat with one button attacking and one button countering. Oh, and a jump button, a stun button, a Baterang button, a Bat Claw button, an electric shock button, an explosive gel button, a series of brutal takedown buttons, and I think a freeze grenade as well? I can’t remember; there’s just so much to keep track of.

The game seems to know you'll want to try out all your moves, so it throws exactly one Bat-ton of fist-fodder your way.

The only downside to the combat system’s kitchen sink approach is that you will forget how to do half of the things the game teaches you, or just won’t find any use once you find some simple habits that get you through all altercations. Still, I greatly prefer the option to have more rather than less, so much so that I’ve been spending more time playing the Challenge Maps than the game’s story mode, though I have to continually go back when I’ve completed all available maps and need to unlock more in the story. Part of it helps that I have both Catwoman and Robin downloaded for Challenge Maps, but your mileage on bonus characters may vary.

To address the choice of Catwoman being unlocked in the game only if you either purchase new or pay $10 online, I’m more than happy she’s included. If you have the option to get Arkham City new, or used from Game Stop since they’ve been putting her codes in anyway, absolutely do it. She plays slightly differently from Batman, and so far I’ve only had a chance to play through two or her four story missions, but I’ve also found that this is my favorite version of Catwoman now, partly due to the costume and partly due to just wanting to play as Catwoman in a legitimately good game.

That phrase “my favorite” may be cropping up a lot, but it’s the best way to describe things here. Even the points where I have to slow down and go into Predator mode to silently take out a room full of armed thugs don’t bother me much, mostly because the further you go through the game, the more options you unlock to take criminals out. Bored of Silent Takedowns? Try locking a guard’s gun from firing and causally walk up to him as he panics. There’s just so much variety that it’s hard to get bored.

For reference, GO BUY THIS GAME.

And that’s the overall theme of the game. There’s so much to do that it’s difficult to find a point where you’ll get cheated. Even if you don’t feel like advancing the game’s plot, there are Riddler Trophies, Joker Balloons, security cameras, interesting side quests, character bios, Challenge Maps, and a whole separate part of the game with Catwoman. Plus I hear that Nightwing is showing up on November 1st? I’m sold. Again.

I can’t say enough nice things about Arkham City. The game is as close to perfection as I feel it ever needs to strive for, proven by my giddy interest levels staying at their peak for over a week now even after playing every chance I get. There’s no need for a score here as the score is “Batman.” Go buy Arkham City- buy it new even- and you’ll thank me.

And oh snaps, I just got Dark Souls from Other Chris today! Looks like I’ve got a lot more torment in my future!

• 2006: Resistance: Fall of Man
• 2007: Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction
• 2008: Resistance 2, AND the downloadable Ratchet and Clank Future: Quest for Booty
• 2009: Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack in Time

2010 Was the first time in five years the company took a break, but then they made up for that by releasing two full-length games in 2011. This September, we saw the release of Resistance 3, a more than superb capper to a surprisingly unique trilogy of shooters, and now, Ratchet and Clank All 4 One releases along side the already raved-about Batman Arkham City as something more suiting for a younger, more casual audience. A ballsy move to be sure. Can this series’ timeless charm and consistently high quality keep it in the running against such a juggernaut of a contender?

Now I’m going to be perfectly honest here, I love the Ratchet and Clank series. Just about every single entry thus far (save for maybe Deadlocked) has been a perfect combination of platforming, shooting, exploration, wonderfully refreshing writing, memorable characters, and the most unique library of weapons in all of video games, bar none. Likewise for the series’ latest installment, 2009’s A Crack In Time. In fact, I loved that game so much and how well it concluded the R&C Future Trilogy that I would have been perfectly fine with that being the very last game of the series. And as All 4 One begins, it almost sounds like Ratchet himself agrees with me.

It all starts with our Lombax hero and his diminutive robot partner Clank confessing their retirement from the hero business, leaving matters concerning the still-at-large Dr. Nefarious in the hands of Solana Galaxy’s newly elected president. Unfortunately, said president happens to be our very own inept super hero, Copernicus Quark (don’t ask how he got elected, I really couldn’t tell you), and wouldn’t you know it, it doesn’t take long for him to botcher things up and lead himself, our long time heroes, and their greatest adversary, all to get captured, dragged to a galaxy far from anywhere any of them have ever been, surrounded by creatures unlike any they have ever witnessed, forced to band together against a force unlike any they have ever… well you get the point.

The first thing people should know about this game is that it is an unusual derail from the original Ratchet and Clank’s single player adventure formula. All 4 One was built from the ground up as a 4-player Co-Op Platformer, and the gameplay is made to take advantage of that new game type. You and one to three friends take on the roles of Ratchet, Clank, Quark, and/or Nefarious to uncover the secrets behind this whole new Galaxy that’s being converted into a breeding ground for giant alien monsters.

After playing through a good chunk of the game myself, I can say that the co-op aspect of this game works very well. Battles and puzzles are made to take advantage of multiple players working together. You can play with others either offline or online, but seeing as entering a game already in process means your partners have to reboot to the most recent previous checkpoint, that can get a little cumbersome, so I didn’t bother much with that. No, this is a party game in the works, and playing with your buddies in the same room is where it’s at. I played with just one of my friends, with another watching on the sidelines, and that alone was a lot of laughs. There is a very simple joy that comes from combining weapon attacks for an extra powerful blast.

The weapons themselves, while nothing new, come in a very wide variety. Among them you have your classic automatic combustor, grenade launcher, rocket launcher, fire ice and electric guns, a highly dedicated miniature assist mecha named Mr. Zurkon, and not to mention the welcomed return of the critter creator (it turns your enemies into pigs. No joke). In addition, each individual character has one unique weapon all their own, though they all seem to be various forms of defense mechanisms. For instance, Ratchet gets a decoy gadget that allows him to drop targets that divert enemy attacks, while Dr. Nefarious has a cloaking devise that will turn him invisible so he can sneak-attack enemies from behind.

Then there is a whole slew of assist gadgets used to help you traverse the vast platforming realms. These include items like the grappling hook used to tether onto fellow players as you swing across chasms, while another one of the more frequent items is the vacuum gun, which will allow you to pick up your partners and throw them off cliffs to their death launch them across distances normally unreachable.

It’s only funny until Clank takes advantage of Quark’s trust and drops his conceited green butt down a hive of tetramites. Then it’s hilarious.

While I appreciate the franchise for taking risks and trying something new with it’s formula, All 4 One does have some serious missteps that are sure to turn off the more hardcore dedicated fans of the series, first being the weapon upgrade system. In previous games, weapons leveled up with use and experience, whereas in this game, all ammo and power upgrades are collected through purchase. What this means is that players are no longer encouraged to cycle through each of their weapons like they were before. Players can simply spend all their money upgrading one or two of their weapons, and that is all they will ever need.

The second problem is a little more generic. Every aspect of the game seems to be toned down for a younger audience. There are instructions for the simplest of tasks, such as what health boxes look like. Many of the quote/unquote “puzzle sections” are so easy that they are hardly puzzles at all. Then there is the writing. While not bad, and it does have funny moments, when put side-by-side with the series’ edgy, unique, and brilliant origins, the dialogue here feels disappointingly mild.

The best way to sum up All 4 One is that it is the Post-Trilogy-Party Game. A good example would be when Naughty Dog completed their third Crash Bandicoot game on the PS1, then decided to make their fourth game a kart racer, Crash Team Racing. Naughty Dog then went on to follow that same formula with their Jak series on the PS2. To a certain extent, Insomniac attempted this formula on the PS2 as well, following their first three Ratchet and Clank games with Ratchet Deadlocked, an ill-fated response to the rise in popularity of online competitive multiplayer. Is All 4 One as much of a let down as Deadlocked? Not entirely, but it does share a similar stigma of being the slump after a perfectly satisfying climax with their prior installment.

Despite the game’s faults, my friends and I still had a blast with this game. The co-op platforming and shooting sections work like a charm. There are also plenty of additional gameplay types like jet-packing and rail-grinding challenges to break up the monotony and keep the game fresh. The campaign itself is quite lengthy, so there is plenty of content to keep you and your friends busy competing for who can snatch the most bolts for some time.

If you have kids with a PS3 and are looking for a good gift this Christmas, you can’t do much better than All 4 One. If you are a series regular, level your expectations accordingly, grab a friend (or two or three), and take a load off. If you’re new to the Ratchet and Clank franchise, might I suggest opting out of this installment and starting with either Tools of Destruction, or if you have a PS2, go out and find copies of the second and third installments, Going Commando and Up Your Arsenal.

Seriously, do Ratchet and Clank games have the greatest sub-titles or what?

Could there possibly be anything left for me to enjoy on yet another playthrough?

Currently the 3DS’ flagship title, Ocarina of Time 3D is my favorite game of all time remade with a graphical update, some tweaks to make controls simplified, and overall the addition of 3D. How can any of that not sound like a winner?

I’ll start with the graphics, since I’m pretty sure that no one needs a refresher course on the story here (Link must save Zelda and by extension also Hyrule from the evils of Ganondorf, there, happy?). Of all the things to get caught up in, I am genuinely surprised that the graphics ended up being my biggest purchase justifier. I’m just not a graphics person, I can’t be when I support Nintendo for so long and so adamantly, but I can’t help and just stare at the screen, seeing how the landscapes I grew up with have been carefully retouched to include smoother textures, more detailed features, and overall improvements.

For example, the ivy in the game used to be flat to the background as it was simply a bit of wallpaper to add detail and let you know that the wall was climbable. However, in the 3D remake, the ivy pops off of surfaces. Plus, and I may be mistaken, I think Link climbs faster this time around. Maybe I’m just way off?

So it looks nice, but what about the music? Is the music still great?

While the graphics became more powerful, the soundtrack was left entirely unaltered, save for a recomposition of the credits theme right at the end for the sake of the remake’s extra credits. I don’t quite know what to think of this. On the one hand, it’s nice that the original tracks were able to stand for themselves and show that they’ve withstood the ages as excellent songs. On the other hand, I’m a huge fan of revamped soundtracks and wouldn’t have minded the update to the sound one bit. Oh well, at least the music didn’t suffer at all, but wouldn’t it have been great to have something akin to Overclocked Remix’s excellent recomposed Street Fighter II soundtrack but for Ocarina of Time?

The controls though…well those didn’t suffer either. Everything is just about how you remember it with the touch screen only adding where necessary, not replacing what isn’t broken (thankfully). Now, instead of having three active item slots, you have four. Two of those are touch-based, which are definitely less responsive than the buttons, but letting them act as an item that doesn’t require constant use, like Deku sticks or the trading quest item, just shows their practicality.

Along with the touch screen comes some shifting around of the menus, so now the Ocarina is firmly located in the lower left of the screen and boots are no longer part of the equipment screen but rather actual items, allowing you to quickly take them off or put them back on with a single button press instead of navigating the pause menus. It speeds up the Water Temple a whole hell of a lot and for that I’m at least appreciative.

Success!

I will say this about the Ocarina playing though: Getting used to the new button layout will take a lot of time. I played Ocarina of Time on the N64 and then again on the GameCube, but here the buttons seem to be shifted 90 degrees. It’s not a deal breaker, but it’s somewhat frustrating to have to relearn the Ocarina after all these years of being a pro.

But does the game justify the need for 3D? The majority of reviews online tend to suggest that the 3D is a wasted feature that needs to be promptly switched off the second the game is loaded up. As I’m somehow immune to the “sickening effects” of the 3D, somehow, I left it on the entire game. As a result, those lovely graphics exploded even more into my face and rocked my socks harder than expected. Yes the 3D feature works and it is amazing. I didn’t feel like it was a gimmick and I didn’t feel it did anything except make the game look even more amazing. Full recommendation there.

I will admit to shutting the 3D off for these horse sections for some reason though. No idea why but I did.

However, I’m not so blind to nostalgia that I can’t see some flaws in both the remake and the original game. Replaying it now, I’ve gotta say, the bosses are so incredibly easy that it’s ridiculous. Perhaps I’ve just grown so used to them, but I didn’t once face a challenge here. I’m proud to say that I don’t have a single death recorded throughout the game, but I am a bit bothered that the death counter has been removed, so I can’t even prove it.

The game is beyond simple at its core. There’s little mystery and while you can explore here and there, the incentive to do so isn’t very high other than collecting rupees, a currency that loss all meaning about halfway through the game, and Gold Skulltulas, which ultimately reward you with the worst 100% complete gift ever of maxing out your rupees (which as I just said loses all meaning halfway through the game).

But, all of this is coming from someone who’s played the original game more than any other game. I know where everything is, I know how to defeat every enemy and boss, and I know exactly what’s going to happen next in the plot. I’m at an advantage and a disadvantage at the same time.

But what's new? What else have you got to get me to buy?

Thankfully for me there’s one part of Ocarina of Time 3D that I haven’t experienced yet: The Master Quest. Upon completion of the game, the Master Quest is unlocked, also known as the harder version of the game with a mirrored world and rearranged dungeons. I’ve never played the Master Quest before, and I didn’t particularly feel like purchasing the GameCube version since I already owned the Anniversary Collection, which includes a GameCube version of Ocarina of Time. The sad part is that you’re forced to play through the entire game to unlock the Master Quest, meaning that while I’ll play it eventually, I don’t have the energy to restart the game immediately from the beginning.

Honestly, I would really have loved some more content for longtime players such as a new dungeon or a new weapon or a new minigame or something. It’s nowhere near an aspect that’d push me away, as I was entertained the entire time and enjoying myself, but after getting all the Heart Pieces, upgrades, and beating the game, I was just sort of hit with a hollow feeling.

How much harder can this really be though? I welcome the challenge!

When it comes right down to it, Ocarina of Time 3D is worth every cent purely for the graphical update and the 3D functionality. The improved menu system only further adds to the title. Basically, if you’ve never played Ocarina of Time before for some reason, now is the absolute best time, and if you’ve played it as many times as I have but need an excuse to go through it one last time, here’s your chance.

But that’s of course just me. What have you guys thought of the remake? Did you love it or would you have preferred to pass? Leave a comment and let your voice be heard. Meanwhile, I have a Master Quest that needs my attention. Now if only we could get Majora’s Mask onto the 3DS…

However, I am in no way against re-releasing the God of War spinoff games from the PSP to a platform I actually have. And that is exactly what we got with one of the PS3’s latest combo packs, The God of War Origins Collection.

To clarify, this collection contains the two PSP God of War games known as Chains of Olympus (2008) and Ghost of Sparta (2010). These games were made, not by Santa Monica, but by Ready at Dawn Studios, who made their debut to the industry with a frequently well-received PSP platformer, Daxter (2006), of which also happened to be a handheld spinoff of another popular PS2 franchise at the time. Formalities aside, rest assured the developers have stayed true and blue to the series’ roots, as the controls are roughly one button press away from being exact replicas of any of the three console games. Even more so for the Collection, as they have accommodated for the controller’s second analog stick to apply for Kratos’ rolling dodge move. (Originally done on the handheld by holding both shoulder buttons and then moving.)

Likewise can be said for the gameplay itself, which follows the exact same ain’t-broke-don’t-fix-it formula from every other game in the series: bloody fight, solve a puzzle, bloody fight, platforming, bloody fight, sex minigame, bloodier boss fight, cue Linda Hunt Oscar-winning narration, repeat. Not to say that this is bad by any means, it just means there is very little to be had as far as real surprises go. Sure we run into a few new classic Greek creatures and characters: a Basilisk, Scylla, a Persian army, Charon, King Midas, even the grunt fighters, the satyrs, seem more quicker and lethal than normal. But none of these fights come close to being as gripping as the opening Hydra battle in the first God of War, or as mind warping and elaborate as the battle with the Sisters of Fate in God of War II.

When these games first released, I did not think there would be much of a story to them. The first God of War had an excellent story, God of War 2 and 3, however, at their bare bones, combine to be an elongated revenge tale for a guy who ceases to be sympathetic at all. I assumed the PSP games, seeing as they had to fit stories in-between games that already existed, they would just be something simple and generic to serve as an excuse for fans to get their hack-n-slash fix on a handheld. I am very please to say that was a mistake. The origin stories of these games, even more than the familiar gameplay, should be the real selling point. They fit excellently within the continuity of the console games and, oddly enough, are the moments where Kratos feels the most fleshed out and human he’s ever been.

Chains of Olympus

Chains of Olympus is a prequel to the first God of War, taking place sometime during Kratos’ ten-year service to the gods to atone for his sins. Still believing they will get rid of his nightmares, he answers the call of the gods when he witnesses first-hand the sun plummet from the sky. Helios the sun god has been taken deep under the earth, and the rest of the world, even the other gods, are all falling into a deep slumber at the hands of the dream god Morpheus.

There are two things the plot of Chains of Olympus does really well. First, there are a couple unexplained plot elements from the console games…

• The Titan Atlas blaming Kratos for his sentence to carry the earth on his shoulders. (GoW2)
• Hades accusing Kratos for the murder of his queen, Persephone. (GoW3)
• Helios offering Kratos repayment for rescuing him in exchange to spare his life. (Also GoW3)

…all of which get explained in the climax of this game.

The second thing is, as I said earlier, we get to see Kratos in probably his most vulnerable state yet. At this point in the story, he is still extremely guilt ridden for the crimes he committed against his family. So when the Queen of the Underworld offers him a chance to live in Elysium with his daughter Calliope at the cost of relinquishing all his weapons, he takes it in a heartbeat, in complete disregard to what Persephone’s motives behind said gesture may be.

If it’s not already obvious yet, Persephone is the puppeteer behind everything in Chains of Olympus. Not only that, she is probably the series’ most sympathetic main villain. Her back-story is glossed over in the game, but she doesn’t need much more than that, because we’ve all heard her tragic tale ever since we first read it in middle school. (Or was I the only one paying attention?)

Ghost of Sparta

Moving onto the second game, Ghost of Sparta is a prequel to God of War II. Upon defeating Ares, Kratos has been appointed as the new God of War. While the Gods refused to rid the nightmares about his wife and daughter, Kratos turns his focus on other demons of his past the games have yet to bring up. In his youth, Kratos had a younger brother named Deimos whom he failed to protect and was taken away from him. Kratos, still believing his brother to be alive, seeks answers at the Temple of Poseidon in the city of Atlantis. There he learns of his brother’s imprisonment in a purgatory guarded by the god of death, Thanatos.

While the inclusion of Kratos having a long lost brother may seem a bit out of nowhere, this was actually one of the very earliest ideas Santa Monica had when first considering plots for a sequel (back when they were directed by David Jaffe). For anyone who owns the original God of War, there is a bonus feature upon beating the game where it plays a little teaser comic that essentially highlighted what then “could” have been a possible plot to a sequel, but is now a very real plot to the sequel’s prequel (confused yet?). Another speculated plot development from way back that crops up is the inclusion of Kratos’ mother Callisto, who finally confirms to her son that his father is in fact the king of the gods. Zeus, of course, had forbidden her from ever revealing the truth to him, and by doing so, she is cursed, and turns into a… um… well… this.

One of the most fascinating things about Kratos is how his story is literally worn on his character design. His ghostly white skin, the chains wielded to his arms, the stab wound in his abdomen, his golden fleece, all tell stories. Ghost of Sparta continues this trend by showing us both where the scar across his right eye came from, as well as the symbolism behind the red tattoo across the left side of his face and chest.

At this point I realized I have already spoiled quite a bit of the game’s opening. I won’t give away any more, though I will say that looking back at it, Ghost of Sparta is probably what the plot of God of War II should have been. It makes Kratos’ anger and hate for the gods, specifically Zeus, a lot more justified, and then they could have saved the “revenge against Zeus” plot strictly for God of War III.

If there were any problems I ran into these games, it’s that there were a few random load times. I don’t know if the portable versions were like that, or if this was a result of remastering all these images for colossal HD televisions. Either way, it is a very minor complaint that isn’t too distracting and would only happen during lulls in the action when progressing from one area to another.

All said and done, I must say I did enjoy Ghost of Sparta slightly more than Chains of Olympus. There is a bit of a graphical upgrade, and while both games do sport plenty of the same old “been there, done that” combat, Ghost of Sparta did take place in an active volcano for a chunk of its game, and as such there were a couple really fast pace run/jump/climb/swing race-against-time sequences. Of all the new weapons and power-ups, I really enjoyed the Arms of Sparta (a classic spear and shield combination).

For not being the original developers, Ready At Dawn have crafted two competent and perfectly serviceable additions to the franchise. If you had fun with the other God of War games, I’d definitely say this collection is worth a play through. Length wise, Chains of Olympus and Ghost of Sparta are roughly 4-5 hours each, which combines to be the length of any one of the console games. As always, it makes an excellent rental game.

And while I did say the franchise is best laid to rest and for Sony and Santa Monica to move onto something new, I would not be completely against the idea of Ready At Dawn making maybe one more installment for the Play Station Vita.

But that’s it! No more after that!

Radiant Silvergun might look like any other shooter, but you'd be wrong.

The wait is over

Radiant Silvergun is a long saught after arcade shooter for fans like myself. Along with Ikaruga, Silvergun is considered one of the “holy grail” games not only because it’s a really good game, but because it was so hard to come by. Unless you had a Sega Saturn and you were willing to pay through the nose to import the game, Radiant Silvergun was unplayable. Even in today’s era of arcade emulators like MAME, finding a working version of Silvergun is quite a chore (I have yet to find one). But that all changed last week when Radiant Silvergun was finally ported to Xbox Live Arcade. And there was much rejoicing.

Although I’m sure there was a lot of weeping too. If you were one of the people that shelled out the big bucks to get Silvergun stateside more than a decade ago, then an XBLA release might sting a bit…but I guess you’ve been playing the game all this time while the rest of us have had to watch from afar. I remember reading a while ago that Silvergun was going to get an XBLA release but I had forgotten about it until I checked the marketplace to find it ready and waiting for a cool $15. Fifteen dollars for an arcade shooter might sound like a lot, but Radiant Silvergun isn’t your average shooter.

Hope you have fast fingers.

Better than most

What makes Radiant Silvergun most unique and fun is the weapon mechanics. Unlike some of the more common shooters, you start the game with every weapon available. One controller button is assigned to each type of weapon, as you might expect, but the fun begins when you start combining individual weapons to create additional weapons. Combine your straight gun with your spread gun and you get a front-back gun. Combine your main gun with your homing gun and you get a laser. The challenge of simply getting to know your weapons is one that will take some time, as well as the combinations needed to create the right offense for the current situation you’re in. Playing Radiant Silvergun with a normal controller can be quite frustrating to the point of feeling like an idiot. Your fingers on both hands have to coordinate in an elegant dance just to survive…unless you have a secret weapon…

A joystick.

To be honest, I gave up using the regular controller almost immediately because I have a decent arcade joystick that I have just for shooters (and fighters). Playing any arcade shooter with a normal controller just doesn’t feel right and won’t get you very good results. Sure, it’s possible and it’s still fun using a normal controller, but in a way you’re kind of crapping on the spirit of the genre when you do. And in the case of Radiant Silvergun, you really need a joystick to enjoy it.

Using your “arcade fingers” to combine and fire your weapons is a breeze without all the mental overhead. You’ll still need to play a few times before you know what combinations do what, but they’re so much easier to pull off when you only have three buttons to worry about instead of seven. You shouldn’t have to fight the technology in any video game and a joystick eliminates that worry entirely. However, just because firing guns and moving around is easier with a joystick, doesn’t make the game any less of a challenge.

Have a joystick? Good. You're gonna need it.

Pure arcade fun

Radiant Silvergun is straight up arcade brutality. It’s hard. You’ll die quick and you’ll die often. You do get four credits worth of continues but once you blow through those, that’s it, time to start over…and there in lies the greatest part of any arcade shooter: you have limited life. You don’t get endless continues or save points in these games, which makes you actually learn the game and get good at it. Real good. Compared to today’s games, not having continues or saves sounds rather barbaric but let’s not forget that we used to have to play all video games that way. Last time I checked, Super Mario Bros didn’t offer any save points or continue codes, and there’s a reason we can all play through the first levels with our eyes closed…we played it a lot and because of that we got good. Game saves and continues really ruined the perceived skill in video games. Anyone can make a save point and try that one spot over and over and they’ll eventually get through, but that doesn’t make them good. Consistency is defined by greatness, not luck…but I digress.

So Radiant Silvergun is hard but there’s quite a bit going on that makes it such a challenge. The levels themselves can have lots of twists and turns, but one of the big challenges is just determining what weapon to use at what time. You’ll have to play through levels over and over before you get your own pattern down, let alone bullet and enemy patterns. It also shouldn’t be much surprise to find there is also reward for chaining enemy kills. Kill three enemies of the same color in order and you’ll gain some bonus points. Yet in Radiant Silvergun, bonuses like this don’t just get you a higher score, they upgrade your weapons as well. The more you kill with a certain type of weapon, the stronger it gets…yet one more reason you’ll need to know your weapons very well.

Great challenge with great reward

Radiant Silvergun is one of the most challenging and yet most balanced arcade shooters I’ve ever played. Yeah, it’s hard but at no point do you feel completely hopeless, which is more than I can say when I play Ikaruga, Silvergun‘s younger cousin. The weapon system keeps you on your toes and the reward for chaining means you have to really pay attention to where you are and what you’re shooting. You just can’t go in a shoot blindly…well, you can, just don’t expect to make the leaderboard, which by the way, you’ll need at least a million points to even make be at the bottom of the list.

It’s great to finally have Radiant Silvergun in my XBLA collection but it’s always nice to see any well made and fun arcade shooter than isn’t a dual-stick bullet fest. Shooters like Geometry Wars are frantic and fun but they fulfill a different niche than “classic” style shooters like Silvergun and Ikargua. It is far more satisfying and rewarding when you score big in a fixed shooter than it is when you have both sticks and all directions and your disposal. There’s an elegance to fixed shooters that you just don’t get from other styles. It’s about level design, weapon management, score chaining and just outright memorization. Each style has its place, and I enjoy both, but being good at a game like Radiant Silvergun comes with a bit more prestige.

Even if you’re not a big arcade shooter fan, if you buy one shooter you can’t do much better than Radiant Silvergun. Heck, between Ikaruga and Radiant Silvergun, you can spend $25 and have two of the best shooters ever released. Just make sure you have your joystick handy.

Is it just me or does this look like it'll probably be lacking?

BloodRayne: Betrayal is actually the first game in the BloodRayne series I’ve ever played. This puts me both at an advantage as I’m not particularly attached to the previous games’ style, but it also places me in a tough spot since I have absolutely no idea why I should care what’s happening in the plot and who specific characters are.

The game opens up on Rayne being called into a raid on a castle where supposed vampires or some such have been reported doing something or other. An elite task force determines they’re not elite enough and Rayne shows up to do all the work. I was never quite sure whether Rayne was on the side of the soldiers or if they were trying to catch her or what. I suppose it didn’t really matter as they’re just a means to point and say “Go mess up some vampires!”

All of the narrative is told through text-based speech bubbles that appear when something plot-based is happening, such as when new characters are introduced or there’s banter to be had between Rayne and some enemies. I like that these plot points don’t slow down the action, but a few times I was completely unable to read what characters were saying as I had to pay attention to environmental hazards instead, which is a shame because I rather enjoyed the cheesy pun-heavy dialogue characters were spewing, as if everyone involved knew not to take things seriously.

Well Rayne certain looks like she can handle herself I suppose.

Well, everything except for the difficulty level. BloodRayne: Betrayal is hard, and not for the right reasons. I’d like to consider myself a pretty good gamer, able to push my way through the toughest challenges, but here I nearly gave up on multiple occasions. The problem comes down to a schizophrenic attitude between wanting the game to focus heavily on combat and dropping all pretenses and swinging into full platforming territory. Trying to hover between these two styles of gameplay- sometimes in the same sequences- leaves a lot that still needs polishing.

When it comes to the combat, the first level promises a lot and serves well to introduce at least some of Rayne’s abilities. She can hack away, dash around, suck blood, shoot enemies in the face, and even turn them into walking explosives. The only problem is that some of these mechanics aren’t really explained or needed for quite a while, so through the first half of the game I was wondering what the Y button on my controller did other than make Rayne yell all sexy-like (turns out that detonates your exploding-enemies attack, though I’d never know because I hadn’t created any exploding enemies until the game told me specifically how to do such a thing much later on).

Everything moves smoothly when you hit your rhythm, though it is difficult to see whether combos are flowing into one another or if you’re just mashing the attack button hard enough that it works. There just aren’t enough enemy types to really demand a different attack style. All enemies take damage the same way, so there’s no need to start thinking strategically when posed with the challenge of three or four different enemies on the screen at once.

It's like "Where's Waldo" but with vampires.

The only time a screen full of enemies becomes particularly masochistic is when you’re forced to fight them in a room where everyone’s a silhouette and the foreground has pillars and such obstructing your view. Most of the deaths I suffered during these portions were a direct result of me screaming, “Where am I?! Which black blob is Rayne!?”

However, when the combat breaks down and the plaforming kicks in, things don’t really get more exciting. All of this is due to the extremely loose platforming controls. Rayne can do backflips, dash in the air, walljump off some surfaces (but not all), and hop on enemy heads. That last move becomes the central mode of transportation later in the game when you have bottomless pits and acid and lava and such to deal with, meaning that one missed jump will result in instadeath and gnashing of teeth.

I may not be a master at hack-and-slash games, but I know my platforming very well. I’ve conquered Super Meat Boy and I Wanna Be The Guy, but trying to hop from one floating orb to the next using Rayne’s down-attack in the air got me about as frustrated as I’ve been in a long while. It’s just not very precise. I’ll admit when I screw up due to carelessness or a general lack of focus, but here I just felt cheated.

Seriously, even I Wanna Be The Guy felt more fair, and gave me infinite bullets.

Remember how in a lot of older games on the NES and SNES there was usually a problem of having to land directly on top of platforms and that if you were too close to the edge or jumped at a weird angle you wouldn’t land on the surface and just fell right through? Remember how unfairly frustrating that was? That happens all the time in BloodRayne: Betrayal.

As I said, the last few stages in the game stop playing fairly and just send you on extended platforming sections with the same enemy encounters you’ve dealt with before as a reward before getting to the next checkpoint. Having to land directly on top of an enemy fly (having to point the control stick down to do so), then immediately trying to dash to the left in the air (having to point the control stick up and to the left) and reorient yourself to stomp the next enemy, only to be greeted by a claustrophobic enemy encounter on the other side of a rather long chasm pushed my stress levels past the comfort zone.

Don’t misunderstand me here, as I’m not suggesting that BloodRayne: Betrayal is devoid of some fun. I found myself really enjoying the early levels before the novelty of the combat ran out and the platforming became too teeth-gratingly hard. If this were a Newgrounds game, then I’d be praising the short title for having some fun with the source material. But this isn’t a Newgrounds game; this is a full-priced XBLA title. We’re talking 1200 MS points, a price that’s a bit steep for what we’re presented here.

Even a huge death ray-like weapon fails to impress. Unfortunate.

Most of the reason I’m making the Flash-game connection comes down to the art style. Someone is going to love the way the game looks as it’s hand-drawn art with character animations that looks incredibly smooth, but it also looks pretty flat and bland when put on a big screen with HD graphics. It wasn’t until beating the game and unlocking the art gallery that I was able to see what some of these characters actually looked like up close, which is extremely odd since I played the game on a 38” screen and sat like two feet away.

BloodRayne: Betrayal is hard, but it’s not impossible. The combat system becomes stale extremely quickly, the platforming hurts like flagellation, and there isn’t much more to instill a second playthrough beyond Achievements. If you’re looking for something to keep your platforming-hell instincts sharp, or just like the whole vampire aesthetic, then go ahead and give the game a demo.

Enough from me though, what about you? Those who played BloodRayne: Betrayal, what did you think? Or have you been looking forward to this one for a while? Leave a comment and let me know. As for me, I think I’ll just go ahead and avoid this one like sunlight.

Quick rundown: Resistance, Fall of Man released with the system launch back in 2006 and was quickly hailed as the Best PS3 Launch Title (which I guess is just the nicer way of saying “Only Good Launch Title”). Two years later when I bought the system myself at an acceptable price, I played Resistance and generally liked it. The controls took some getting use to, but the aliens looked scary, and the weapons were creative in a way only Insomniac could deliver (these are the guys who made Ratchet and Clank after all). Resistance 2 then came out, and I played that. The controls and the graphics improved, there were quite a few really awesome boss fights, but I missed a lot of the weapons, and the ending scene in particular was a real killjoy.

Now that I have completed my first run of the campaign for Resistance 3, I am pleased to say that it takes the best elements of each of the first two games, fine-tunes them, and manages to create something that succeeds on being both a serious drama and a whimsical shoot-em-up.

So this is how history really went down. August 1957, the US and pretty much everywhere else on Earth is all but lost to the Chimera. In fact, the Chimera are so dominant over the planet, that some of them have even evolved to feral inbred monsters that their own race can’t even control. We’re reintroduced to Joseph Capelli, whom you might remember as Sergeant Nathan Hale’s bulky short-tempered NPC partner with crappy AI. Well, four years after being discharged for dishonorable conduct (I.E. killing off the series’ main protagonist… its complicated), Joe has lost quite a bit of weight and is hiding underground Oklahoma with a small group of survivors, including his own wife and child. A bit of good news is that Dr. Malicov has succeeded in synthesizing an antidote to the chimera infection from Hale’s blood. So now, not only Joe, but all remaining humans are immune to the chimera virus.

That still doesn’t solve the tiny little problem of the chimera kind of already owning the planet. But wait, it gets better. Dr. Mal wants Joe to join him on a road trip to New York to attempt one last all-or-nothing mission to destroy the Chimera’s massive wormhole device, thus stopping their hostile takeover of the planet in its tracks. Joe’s wife, still wanting to believe there’s hope, tells him to go. And thus our road trip through the Hybrid infested planet from Oklahoma to New York begins.

All right, place your bets! Who is going to die? Will it be…

• A. The Wife
• B. The Son
• C. The Scientist
• D. The Reminant Leader guy who looks sort of like 50’s Nathan Drake.
• E. The Pilot
• F. The Priest/train repair man.
• G. The guy who helps you escape the bandit’s prison.
• H. Hell, Joe himself, why not? They killed off Hale in the last game.

All joking aside, these games have shown in the past that they are not afraid to kill people off, and you know at least one of the aforementioned above is going to buy it before the end. Just be ready for the conditions on said death may be far less predictable and more dramatically ironic than you might ever imagine.

Besides we all know who the real victims of these games are. Chimeras. Lots and lots of Chimera. And this time, we’ve added armored gorillas, hundred foot tall acid-spewing spiders, and grasshoppers to the hunting season, just to name a few.

What should be one of the biggest selling points for Resistance 3 is that it happens to have lots of old school FPS mechanics. Remember when Duke Nukem Forever promised to be a blast from the past, but then ended up playing like a shallow knock-off of every modern shooter of the last ten years? That game was more like “old-new school.” Not the case for Resistance 3, which is “new-old school,” if that makes any sense.

For instance, because Joe is now cured of the chimera virus, he no longer has his healing factor. That means no regenerating health. This is a game for survival, where you have to rely on finding health packs to keep yourself alive. Trust me, it makes the game that much more challenging, but I like it. It’s another reason to be aware of your surroundings and explore the terrain you have to work with.

Then there’s the guns. The weapon wheel is back, allowing you to carry all your guns at once. 12 Weapons in total. Each of which (except for the melee weapon) has a secondary function, not to mention two level upgrades, (an excellent reward for players who mix it up). The people at Insomniac are the geniuses behind Ratchet and Clank, which I still hold to have the greatest weapon system in any video game ever made, and Resistance 3 definitely follows close behind. I could go on forever about the weapons: The Bullseye, an alien machine gun that tags opponents and immediately locks onto them (real helpful against those pesky leapers) the Auger, which sees and even shoots through walls, the Magnum with exploding rounds, a Rosemore Shotgun that lights enemies on fire, an electric gun, an ice gun, the list goes on.

I apologize to our readers who are curious about the multiplayer, but since I have yet to delve into it I cannot comment heavily on it. Though I am aware the campaign can be played with two-player co-op, and the online experience is supposedly much more polished than Resistance 2, I don’t really see any of this taking that many players in the online crowd away from Call of Duty. I personally would be one willing to forgo online multiplayer entirely if it meant a longer, even better campaign, which in the end only rounded out to roughly eight hours long.

And therein lies probably this game’s biggest hurdle. At the end of the day, The Resistance Trilogy, as good as it may be, cannot compete with the massive onslaught of other shooter franchises that flood the Triple A market in this generation. Each year a Resistance game for the PS3 has come out, their prime competitor has been a Gears of War game for the 360 that same month. In both the last two instances, Resistance was clearly outmatched in sales, and I really don’t see a difference happening this time when Gears 3 comes out in a few weeks. A shame, because I honestly think this franchise is a ton more original than its first impression lets on. Yes, it’s another sci-fi shooter, but it’s an alternate history piece at the same time. The protagonists aren’t power-armored space marines flying into war. They’re just normal people doing their best to survive. The alien weapons actually feel alien. The human weapons aren’t made-up futuristic technology BS, but are actually very rational for the time period (like the improvised shrapnel grenades, which were a nice touch). The story is well written, the characters are decent, the aliens are well designed, and most of all, it’s fun. Fun enough to make me want to play the campaign all over agian just to level up all my guns.

Before I end, I would like to congratulate Insomniac Games on completing not just the first, but the FIRST TWO fully realized trilogies on the PS3. The Ratchet and Clank Future Trilogy was first (including Tools of Destruction, Quest of Booty, and A Crack in Time.) and now the three Resistance games are second. It is without a doubt incredible that a single company has managed to put out quality material nearly every single year of the console’s existence since 2006. Last year was the only exception, and then they made up for it by giving us TWO games this year. (Ratchet and Clank All 4 One set to release this October). At this point, after all the work Insomniac has done for Sony for the past 16 years, I say they are more than justified in their decision to finally go multi platform and share talents among other consoles. Which is exactly what Insomniac plans to do with their next big franchise, Overstrike.

Keep an eye out for that one to turn a few heads, next year.

 …Hammer Time!

Doh!

I don’t have much of an attention span when it comes to video games. This doesn’t mean I can’t stick with a game for a long time, I can, it just means I don’t want a lot of downtime during my game. I don’t want to talk to NPCs in the tavern or solve riddles with dialog trees. The story needs to be present and entertaining but shouldn’t require me to take notes. I don’t need lengthy cut scenes to motivate me, nor do I need a party of mages, rangers, wizards and elves to keep things fun. Just tell me where to go, what to find and who to beat up and I’ll do my best to do so…and Bastion is the perfect example of everything I want in an RPG.

• Bastion has a simple-yet-fun story of good versus evil.
• Bastion has NPCs that contribute to the experience but aren’t required and don’t drone on.
• Bastion has a nice level-up system and fun inventory management.
• Bastion has a lot of action and destruction.

Bastion plays just as good as it looks...incredible.

Bastion joins a select few

Bastion reminds me a lot of the Guardian of Light release from last summer. It’s a wonderful balance of everything that makes a game fun and entertaining. On top of all the game play goodness, Bastion is also beautiful. The worlds of Bastion are colorful and extremely artistic. The style of Bastion will remind you more of Braid than Tomb Raider but it works wonderfully and is a delight to see, although there are times when the art is hard to decipher and you’ll find yourself falling through a hole in the floor pretty easily. You may notice the art style first but the second thing you’ll come to love is that you have a narrator.

Having a narrator talk throughout your game might sound annoying but believe me when I say it is the exact opposite. Whereas most RPG games give you directions in the form of text that requires endless reading, Bastion dumps all their effort into the narration of each level and just about each action your character can perform. Having a narrator is also a great way to fix the “where do I go” problem RPGs often suffer from. Bastion as a whole is extremely linear but more than once the narrator helped guide me around a level where I would have otherwise been standing there wondering what to do next. Having a voiceover also eliminates the need to stop the action for text and dialog trees. You can keep fighting and moving while you listen to directions and suggestions. The only problem with the narration is that I want it so much be to Sam Elliot and it’s not. Hopefully they can remedy that in a sequel.

Teaming up with fake Sam Elliot feels very efficient and gives you the satisfaction of teamwork without requiring an actual team. This is another feather in Bastion‘s cap. Too many games lean on the multiplayer crutch, and it’s nice to play a game that is incredibly satisfying for the single player. They could have easily slapped co-op on to Bastion but when games do that I feel it detracts from the single player campaign because everyone is so focused on what multiplayer delivers (or doesn’t deliver) that they skip right over the campaign and dismiss the game as weak. A lot of time and effort went into Bastion’s campaign and it shows in every detail of the game. So what’s wrong with Bastion?

Don't let the style fool you, things can get tough real quick.

Flaws are few and far between

Honestly, there’s not much to ding Bastion on except maybe the wash-rinse-repeat aspect that is, frankly, common amongst every game, especially RPGs. Bastion is several hours of game play that has you hopping from level to level in search of crystals to restore order to the world. At a glance Bastion looks like a very monotonous journey but the length of the levels and inventory choices create a wonderful pace. Each level is relatively short but your selection of weapons, upgrades and add-ons keeps you playing over and over while you learn and pick your favorite combination. In addition to the main story quest there are smaller challenge levels that focus on weapons and tactics which keep things fun and motivating by way of high scores and time limits…my kind of challenge. If you get a little bored with the main line you can jump out for a bit and just have fun beating stuff up.

However, Bastion succeeds most at just being a good, solid game that is a little break from the normal video game grind. It doesn’t matter if you spend most of your time shooting people in Call of Duty, watching rendered HD goodness in Final Fantasy, or trying to lay down the next high score in Galaga DX…Bastion is a wonderful distraction that is a great experience. It’s just challenging enough to not bore you and the pace keeps you playing without even noticing. It’s rare for a game to keep me interested for more than a half hour in one sitting, but Bastion unlocked that achievement, and for that I have to give it props. The Summer of Arcade is off to a great start…lets hope it keeps up.

Brian is a freelance writer that blogs, tweets and even co-hosts a podcast about all the stuff you enjoy.

Remaking a remake…again

I’m huge arcade fan and Galaga is certainly in my Top 10 along with Ms. Pac-Man, Burger Time, and a few others. When I discovered Galaga Legions last year, it quickly became a favorite that did justice to the original. It managed to update Galaga without going over the top…it was just enough. Similarly, Pac-Man CE was an update that was a lot of fun and very challenging, and then they updated that late last year with Pac-Man CE DX (too many letters, if you ask me). Pac-Man CE DX was again another great game and spin on Pac-Man, so naturally when I saw a Galaga DX was coming out, I had high hopes that it would do for Legions what Pac-Man CE DX did for its original CE update.

It might look like Galaga Legions, but there's a few surprises.

Galaga Legions DX builds on top of Galaga Legions and adds more patterns, more challenge, but also does something I didn’t expect – new controls. With the original Legions you could place your satellite ships in any of the four cardinal directions while you continued to shoot straight up…and it was fun. Legions DX throws out this mechanic and instead turns the game into a dual-stick shooter, which seems to take a little bit of the Galaga out of Galaga, if you know what I mean.

However, even with the dual-stick update, Legions DX is far from a disappointment. This game tosses more patterns at you than you can count, and this time you’re also up against the clock. One of the best updates to the game is a time limit, similar to what you have in Pac-Man CE DX. This creates some artificial rush but the dual-stick controls negate this a bit and makes the game a lot easier overall. Unlike the first Legions, which I haven’t been able to beat on adventure mode, you’ll cruise through Legions DX fairly quickly. But whenever a game appears to be easy it usually means it’s not and that is most certainly the case here. Sure, you can get to the end quickly, but can you get a high score? Galaga has always been about a high score and that doesn’t change no matter how many sticks you use to control your ship.

More patterns, more bad guys, more chaos.

Last but not least, Legions DX also adds a time trial mode for every level of every stage, and in another page from the Pac-Man CE DX handbook, Legions DX features the “oh crap” slow down when an enemy gets too close to your ship. It’s a neat effect that is quite satisfying but at this point nothing too new. If you’re a Galaga fan…or a shmup fan at large, then Legions DX should certainly be on your buy list. The original Galaga Legions is a lot more challenging than Galaga Legions DX, but Legions DX is not without merit…and hey, it’s Galaga!

S’good to be the king

Whoever said we all get 15 minutes of fame never played Half Minute Hero. As the name implies, your fame here is limited to just around 30 seconds as you battle the forces of evil over and over again. I’m a sucker for time limit games. I just think it brings the best out in gamers and finds out just how good you are. Half Minute Hero is a port from the PSP game and I had never played it before, but the challenge of doing anything in 30 seconds was too much of a draw. Thankfully, I wasn’t disappointed with the game even though it strays from the 30 second constraint pretty quickly.

To be fair, however, the quests in Half Minute Hero will almost always be completed in less than 90 seconds, if not less than 60. You play a would-be hero fighting the forces of evil (surprise) that have cast nasty spells all over the kingdom. Conveniently enough, every evil spell has a 30 second time limit before your game is over. Helping you along the way is the Time Goddess and even though you can skip her chit chat, make sure you pay attention because she gives you invaluable hints to completely each quest.

Don't get too excited, all battles are automatic and quick.

As you wonder around each quest map you’ll come across baddies that you fight automatically…yes, automatically. No turn-based time sucks here. When you hit a bad guy your hero goes for the gold every time. Frankly, I really like this feature because in most other RPGs the combat can be extremely daunting, and just because it’s automatic doesn’t mean there isn’t any strategy. Like any good RPG, you can equip your hero with weapons and armor. You’ll visit villages and towns on each map where you can buy additional weapons and food. Quick tip: Save your money and always have an herb handy, you’ll need it.

As far as the 30 second time limit is concerned, you’d be surprised how much you can do in half a minute. However, thanks to your friend the Time Goddess, you can pay to pray at her altar and she’ll reset your clock to a full 30 seconds. If you play your cards right and earn enough gold, you can keep your time going for upwards of two minutes. Two minutes can be a life saver, but don’t go thinking you won’t see that clock hit zero. You’ll fail a lot and have to start each quest over again and again, but since everything happens so fast you don’t really mind. Half Minute Hero is a near-perfect combination of arcade rules in an RPG setting. It works out pretty well. Half Minute Hero is also very well written with humorous dialog, and after you complete each quest you get to watch game credits, which is surprisingly rewarding.

Don't let the old school charm fool you, this game isn't without problems.

If there’s any place Half Minute Hero fails it’s in the controls. You’ll never have a harder time moving your character around map than you will in this game. You wouldn’t think moving around a grid would be so challenging but it just ends up being frustrating, especially when it nips you in the butt and causes you miss a village at the last second. Grrrr! Another tip, the maps are built on a four-way grid, there are no diagonals so don’t try…it’ll just upset you. The cartoon graphics don’t do anything to help the controls despite their charm. You can switch to an old school 16-bit graphics mode, which helps in the control department but otherwise looks like pixel barf on your big screen television.

Sit, play and be on your way

Neither Galaga Legions DX nor Half Minute Hero will result in hours of session gaming. Both of these title are designed to be quick pick-up games that will keep you playing for a few minutes before you’re on your way to bigger and better things. If you’re a high score junkie like myself then you’ll find a little more depth to each of these games, but neither game is perfect or without its faults. However, for $20 you get two games of high quality that can’t be argued. Try the demo of each game before you buy but no one will fault you if you add both of these to your arcade library…and I’ll see you on the leaderboards!

Brian is a freelance writer that blogs, tweets and puts up big numbers.

Want more game reviews? Check these out:

-Minecraft, my new addiction

-My Final Verdict: An L.A. Noire Review

-Lightning and fire and Ice, Oh My: A Review of InFamous 2

You have probably heard the basic premise of Rockstar’s latest interactive movie-game: As L.A.P.D. detective Cole Phelps, you sleuth and gumshoe your way around golden age Los Angeles, solving crimes, leaning on witnesses, chasing down hoods, and rising the ranks. And yes, you probably heard about the astonishing new facial graphics by Team Bondi and how this new feature is vital to ferreting out lies and leads for your investigations.

And there will naturally be many lies to ferret out.

But where did Rockstar cut corners? Well, in the same places as usual, I’m afraid. Let’s break it down in categories:

Story

A game’s immersive tale is always where I start. Contrary to popular belief, the story is what should make a game most interactive. And since this is the game that boasts Hollywood-worthy scripting and performance, one would expect the story to shine.

It wasn’t spectacular. Someone in charge of the narrative could not decide between one-shot episodes (revolving around individual crimes) or an ongoing plot involving corruption and intrigue. So, they decided to weave the two together by forcing macguffins, shoehorning in some split-second character development, and outright stealing devices from a rather good movie called L.A. Confidential.

I never got the chance to grow attached to Cole Phelps because I saw no real development. Oh, and Rockstar should really cut back on a very obvious crutch of theirs (MINOR SPOILERS HERE, PEOPLE. CUT TO THE NEXT PARAGRAPH TO AVOID): When the main character has run out of steam, has been sidetracked, or just can’t continue, Rockstar simply shifts the hapless player over to another lead character. In Red Dead Redemption, John Marston died in a hail of gunfire, so we had to play as his braying ass of a son for the remainder of the game. Now, in L.A. Noire, Phelps is booted to the low-ranking Arson Desk in order to keep him away from a conspiracy. This is a good twist in the game that is wasted when the player must start playing as Jack Kelso, mere insurance investigator and all-around piss-pot. Sorry, but if the story can’t be contained to one playable character, change it. I don’t want to trade in my shiny new detective just when I got used to him, especially if I’m getting a backfiring Volvo in return.

Do you want me to like this guy or not?

Another lazy and unnecessary inclusion to the story is the cutscene of every victim getting stalked and killed before I get my investigation. This caused me to roll my eyes and mutter to myself like a real homicide detective, “Well, now I know the killer is a man of small to medium build and I know what the weapon was and the time of day she was killed. Thanks, cutscene. I thought I was gonna hafta search for clues, or some such crap.” This wouldn’t be so bad if the game was mainly a shooter, but the investigation stories are the driving focus, so I feel cheated by simple laziness.

To summarize (after all, I could write an entire article about this dense of a story), I found the individual cases exciting and immersive enough to keep playing. I was very disappointed with the over-arching plot. So, I’ll call it a draw, no points for or against.

Graphics

Everyone loved the Team Bondi facial graphics in this game. They were new, impressive, and actually used with a purpose. Big thumbs up from me. I just wish the rest of the graphics could have gotten the same care and attention. When I played long enough, it didn’t seem to distract me, but right away I felt jarred by the photo-realism of actors’ faces superimposed on very stiff, garden variety motion-capture bodies. It was like taking an episode of The Sopranos from the necks up and layering it on top of the graphics from Mercenaries 2: World in Flames, which wasn’t bad at all but does seem lazy by comparison.

And someone is always yelling for some reason. No one is ever happy.

The city looks very specifically textured and appropriately active. NPCs in the street are dynamic and independent of the player and car damage is very specific. I can’t help but mention that all of this was very impressive three years ago when Grand Theft Auto IV came out, and this new game was probably easier to accomplish the same goal because of the pastel coloration, smaller virtual community, and less-detailed scenery.

One small note, and I’m not even sure this belongs in graphics discussion, but here it goes: When Cole gets into a fight, or a chase, or some situation where a man’s fedora would be knocked off his melon, it happens. Cole loses his hat and it looks so realistic and natural that it helps to sell the realism of this pulp novel. When it first happened, I got concerned that I lost my hat permanently and that the game had glitched. Then I walked up to my hat, helplessly, and Cole simply picked it up and plopped it back on his head. This doesn’t sound very remarkable, I know, but it was a simple detail that scored faith points from me as a player. I could rest easy knowing that my ever-present fedora could be swept away but would realistically return to me. And this didn’t happen in a static animation complete with a scripted one-liner. I very fluidly controlled Cole through the whole process of walking over, picking up the hat, and putting it back on. Sometimes it really is the little things.

I thought the majority of the graphics were good, but not great. The facial graphics won me over, though, and just like in hockey, the hat trick earns respect. That’s a big plus one for L.A. Noire.

Gameplay

Ooooh, boy. This was the big discussion for me. This game had great “investigation” devices like free-roaming the location for clues, referring to evidence to trap a suspect in a lie, and the notebook menu worked seamlessly to help me along without giving me the answer completely. There were problems: clues were too easy to find thanks to controller-vibrations when I walked over one. The interrogations had ambiguous choices for me to make (I decide to believe the statement, doubt it, or call it out as a lie. But what if I believe the statement is partially true? Should I believe it, or doubt it?). To be frank, I’ve played very similar games that handled the investigation gameplay better, but with shoddy graphics. But a Rockstar game has to be taken more seriously by gamers than a CSI or Law and Order game. Sad.

Whoa, close one, they almost didn't find a way to get guns involved in this one everywhere.

L.A. Noire isn’t just a mystery puzzle, though. Here lies the rub, bub. There are also car chases, foot chases, shootouts, and stealthy games of cat and mouse. And all of these are just plain mediocre. Shooting is the same Rage engine third-person affair with a bollocks cover system. Yep, same from GTA IV, same from Red Dead. Driving gameplay was clearly the lowest priority, which sucks so hard considering the gargantuan amount of driving that is required. All cars in the game maneuver too sensitively and are top-heavy. Traffic in the game is just terrible. In GTA IV, traffic was an obstacle to surmount; in L.A. Noire traffic is a nuisance that gets in your way at ALL times. Not just when it is least convenient (it does that), not just when you are trying to correct a steering error (it does that), but at ALL TIMES. Tailing suspects in stealth mode (both in-car and out) is frustrating. While the Assassin’s Creed games have perfected the blend-in mechanics, L.A. Noire included two useless choices for blending. They are useless because by the time you get into the proper position, your subject is around a corner.

Bottom line, I applaud the developers for trying to seamlessly integrate three or four different game genres into one genre-busting extravaganza. I mourn the fact that L.A. Noire doesn’t bust through genre borders so much as it hitchhikes and limps between them. Four bad fields of gameplay and one decent one do not make a kickass “something-for-everyone.” Additional demerits for recycling from GTA IV gameplay…again. This is a firm stance for me: one point against.

Other Stuff

I’ll just wrap the smaller issues into one focus. The actors’ performances were pretty damn good for a game, aka not very bad for a film. I firmly blame the scriptwriters for Cole wildly switching between mild-mannered and pit bull, and I’d like to see more of Aaron Stanton. Some great stuff came from character actors like Greg Grunberg and Michael McGrady.

I should comment on a few limitations of the software that I found quaint. First off, there are three discs. This game comes on three discs, like a Playstation One game from 1997. More sophisticated games than L.A. Noire can fit on a single disc, so…what gives?

On top of that, the Free Roam mode is splintered into increments based on your progress through the story mode, and these increments happen to be separated by the discs. Did I mention that Free Roam can only be accessed from the main menu, as opposed to the traditional system (always in Free Roam, start a story mission by traveling to the start point)? That kind of takes a player out of the interactive immersion. It’s things like this that kept me from feeling like I was Phelps, or even feeling anything for Phelps.

Speaking of which, glitches and bugs galore! Several times I had to restart an entire investigation because my character just couldn’t run past that idiot bystander who stopped for a smoke. Games can infuriate me, and that’s okay. It just means that the media got an emotional response from me. But when a tech worker gets paid more than I do and his failure to catch a glitch is what infuriates me, we have a consumer-to-producer problem.

I should be looking for clues, not your sloppy gliches.

Final Verdict

Some serious problems with this game could have been easily avoided if only developers could curb their need to make games cinematic with a capital C. If more focus went into L.A. Noire as a game instead of a good marketing trailer, it might be better remembered than it will be. As it stands, what could have been my favorite game yet…isn’t. But for all my bitching, it’s still pretty good.

If we tally up my arbitrary scoring, we get a vague sense that I really liked aspects of this game, even if it didn’t follow through on the implied awesomeness attached. I expect groundbreaking stuff from Rockstar because they bandy about that reputation in between blockbuster games. This game was fun, and I’m glad I played it, but L.A. Noire is not close to groundbreaking. It is more than mundane, but less than thrilling. I say, give it a try. If you aren’t interested by the end of the first two hours, you will not enjoy the rest. Really, it all comes down to a matter of taste.

Want more game reviews? Check these out:

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Short answer: Pretty darn close. Here’s why.

Courtesy, from your ambiguously friendly neighborhood Electric Man.

I will say right now that as I write this review, I have yet to completely finish the game, (nor have I got the chance to explore the user made content, so I won’t be commenting on that). However, I have played at least more than half of my first run of the campaign, and believe I am more than ready to comment on the game’s quality and overall appeal. To begin, veterans of the first game will quickly realize the immense overhaul in the graphic department. On a scale of 1-10, 1 being Pong, and 10 being Uncharted 2, the animations and facial features have gone from a 6 in InFamous to a 9 in Infamous 2. The comic-book style story clips do make a return, however. The game also has some actual cut scenes this time around, which do help create more character depth that just wasn’t possible before.

Speaking of characters, Cole McGrath and Zeke “Jedadia” Dumblar are the only familiar faces, yet both have changed substantially since their last outing (though in different ways). Cole’s got a new voice actor, and thankfully, he no longer sounds like a wannabe Christian Bale Batman/Solid Snake/Rorschach who speaks out of the back of his throat. Fortunately his new voice isn’t too distracting and does fit real nicely with his character. For all of you who threw a hissy fit at Cole’s new makeover which they débuted last year, you can rest easy that Cole has been re-re-modeled to look, more or less, exactly like he did in the first game.

As for Zeke, same voice actor, same overall personality, but last time he was not only completely pointless, but in fact hindered our progress in more ways than one, making him the character everyone was hoping would die in the sequel. This time he’s actually useful and calls you for important stuff, so way to go Sucker Punch for making an obsolete character legit. (As I said, I haven’t played all the way through yet, but if Zeke does end up dyeing at the end of this game now that he’s actually trying to be helpful, that would be a “Sucker Punch” to the face if I ever felt one.)

Now, I may be the only one, but I actually liked a handful of the minor characters from InFamous 1. I was particularly curious what would become of Sasha and Alden (the two supervillians that supposedly didn’t die at the end of the game), and while Moya did annoy me almost more than Zeke did, I was still curious what her next move in tracking you down would be. But sometimes you have to give a little to get a lot. Like they say: Out with the old, and in with the new.

New city, new powers, new Zeke. Good start.

Once again, the plot is made to take advantage of what these games do best: crazy awesome superpowers. After getting his ass kicked and losing all of Empire City to the very monster you were training to destroy, Cole [and Zeke] set out to New Marais to meet with a guy named Wolf, the one responsible for creating the Ray Sphere that gave Cole his powers in the first place. Wolf informs our hero of the blast cores hidden across the city that he can use to enhance his powers so that he’ll be ready for his next confrontation with The Beast. Unfortunately, said blast cores are scattered across the city, heavily guarded by the city Militia, which just so happens to be run by this hick fascist named Bertrand.

The Morality System returns once again, however this time, instead of Cole simply thinking to himself about his options, your options are presented to you in the form of two new characters: Kuo, a former secret agent, and Nix, a city outcast. Cole spends the early portions of the game working back and forth with both women, slowly getting to know each of them, but quickly realizes they have very different ideals, which lead to drastically contrasting ways of handling the Militia and getting the blast cores they need. It won’t be long before you have to choose a side.

How can you not choose the Asian chick? She's so...cool. Oh come on, you were thinking it too.

Whether you choose a certain side based on what kind of powers you want to develop, who you want to work with further, or simply following your own sense of justice, all these different elements are what make the morality system much more interesting this time around. I, being the goody-goody I am, went with Kuo for my first play through and gained a handful of ice abilities that were used in very tactile missions. I got a glimpse of my brother’s game, and he sided with Nix, which gained him fire abilities that were downright devastating. As much as being an asshole (even in simulated form) irritates me, especially when there are more logical, reasonable methods available, I can’t deny that it does look fun to let loose.

The one thing I can say about the duality in this game is it pulls Cole in one of two directions with no middle ground, as the strongest powers can only be used at the highest karma levels at either end of the spectrum. I can see why some people can have a problem with that, as it paints a very black and white outlook on what’s good and what’s evil, yet within the compounds of this game, I think it’s for the best if it keeps this game fun. It also helps that Cole’s character comes out surprisingly consistent either way you pull him.

Ice or Fire? Precision or Destruction? Saint or Psycopath? Choices.

While Sucker Punch has done a lot to improve many of the setbacks from the first game while still keeping all the stuff that was awesome (the story’s dynamic, the characters are wonderful, the town New Marais is far more vibrant and unique than Empire City), there are maybe three glaring nitpicky things I have to comment on. For starters, the game starts off by quickly introducing us to a wide variety of enemies, from the Militia, to these corrupted swamp monsters, and then these burrow digging Ravagers, but it almost feels like the game toots its horn too quickly. The further we get in the game, the fewer new enemies we see, which can cut down the pacing as we zap through the same old guards and monsters to get to the next mission.

Second the camera has occasional freak-outs during high intensive battles. If you’re too reckless when you barrel into a fight, it is very easy to be blindsided as your vision is easily blurred by grenade explosions, rocket launcher explosions, monster sludge, blood, black and white filters, eh, you get the point. Just be careful and know when it gets chaotic, it gets REAL chaotic.

And finally, there are some game glitches I spotted, though very few, like unresponding character sprites getting stuck or missions that wont load. Nothing game breaking, but they do prevent the experience from reaching that level of immersion the developers were seeking.

Still satisfying.

Still, there is so much I love about this game. I love that the power system is far more evolved from last time and gives the player a ton more variety. I love how they created ways to get on top of buildings faster so that I won’t always be climbing. I love how the game encourages completing stunts and side missions to unlock new abilities. I love how the Kinetic Pulse allows me to lift trucks and chuck them at helicopters. I love the new Amp weapon Zeke made for me that makes melee combat awesome. I love how even after I beat the game, I get to go back to play it again and experience a whole new batch of powers.

InFamous 2 is just plain fun. Uncharted 2? Not quite, but definitely in the right direction. Now if you excuse me, I have some more blast cores to find before The Beast shows up again.

Need some games to play this summer? Why not try these:

-Huge Success: A Review of Portal 2

-Get Over Here and Play: A Review of Mortal Kombat (2011)

-Today’s Forecast: Sunny With A Review of Bulletstorm

So much ugly. An indication of things to come?

Gearbox Studios are in a tough spot. Initially, they were applauded for stepping up and fulfilling just about every gamer’s wish to make sure Duke Nukem Forever became something real, tangible, and most importantly playable. For that, we were ready to support them wholeheartedly. Except now we see what they did when everyone was rooting for them. They didn’t make a good game, not even close, but they also didn’t manage to make a bad game that’s so bad it’s worth playing. Rather, they just made a bad game, period.

The single player campaign sees Duke come out of retirement to fight a group of ugly aliens because they’ve stolen all of Earth’s women. Why do the aliens need our women? To inseminate, of course. You will see female residents of the Uncanny Valley get raped for humor’s sake in Duke Nukem Forever. Let me remind you, we supported Gearbox Studios during their time as developers and cried out, “No, Duke Nukem’s not sexist or misogynistic! It’s parody! It’s meant to be a commentary!” Our faith was rewarded with rape jokes. Rape. Jokes. I haven’t facepalmed this hard since Resident Evil 5’s swamp levels.

Boy, we've sure come a long way since our immature past, haven't we?

For a game that’s all-too-comfortable ripping on the big popular FPS titles of our generation (Halo and Call of Duty), it seems to have no problem boggarting game mechanics wholesale, such as regenerating health and the two-guns-only style of modern games. I can’t tell you how disappointed I am with this, both as a gamer who longs for the “good ol’ days” of gaming (health meters and all the guns you can carry), but also as someone who can’t stand smugness. Taking shots at Call of Duty? Fine, I’m totally on board for that. Then proceeding to imitate what you’re mocking? No me gusta.

Other reviewers are going to tell you that the game looks dated. Other reviewers are right. Duke Nukem Forever isn’t the prettiest thing out there, nor is it exactly the worst. Rather, it just looks lazy. Graphics are inconsistent, indicating a lack of polish to the game, an aspect that’s frankly puzzling seeing as the game’s been in development for longer than every current system’s even been out. Who cares if it would have taken another year to get things spotless? We could have waited a while longer if it meant you were going to do your job correctly, Gearbox!

Hey look at that! It's "Not-Halo!"

The biggest feeling I have about Duke Nukem Forever is that of betrayal. Not necessarily by the game itself, or even Gearbox. No, I feel betrayed by the gaming industry itself. Since reappearing at PAX Prime, Duke Nukem Forever was heralded as a fantastic and amazing spectacle to behold. All major gaming sites began devoting any space available to talking about every little PR move Duke Nukem went through, all the while cheering it on and expecting it to be the greatest game that ever was and ever will be. It wasn’t until last week that every game site began doing an about-face and decided that Duke Nukem Forever suddenly wasn’t that good of a thing, game or otherwise. So now I’m sitting here in my living room reading my various favorite game sites and just thinking, “Who do I believe anymore? Do any game sites have any credibility anymore?”

That’s how bad Duke Nukem Forever actually is. It’s called into question all that I believe about video games. I was absolutely ready to go out and buy it Day One, scrounging together any money I had in savings just to get a chance to see what all the hype was about. I’m thankful I was able to abstain as all that’s left is morbid curiosity. I’d even been excited after playing the demo when it was reannounced, but now there’s nothing left to care about.

This is sort of how I feel right now.

If you’re looking for a piece of gaming history, then Duke Nukem Forever is a good place to start. It doesn’t function well as a game, or even an artistic statement, but it does serve to educate anyone why video games aren’t moving past their current maturity level for at least another decade. We asked for this, and now we have to live with it. Forever.

Want more game reviews? Check these out:

-Sweetly Familiar: A Review of Brink

-Rush N Attack and Yar’s Revenge, visiting some old friends

-Huge Success: A Review of Portal 2